The 2008 US presidential election was notable for many reasons. Concerning environmental issues, both candidates, Barack Obama for the Democrats, and John McCain for the Republicans, took distance...Show moreThe 2008 US presidential election was notable for many reasons. Concerning environmental issues, both candidates, Barack Obama for the Democrats, and John McCain for the Republicans, took distance from the Bush administration. Obama’s victory more than ever brought a sparkle of hope for change. Environmentalists both in the United States and worldwide were pleased from his first actions as president, that looked up to what he campaigned the months before. This thesis analyses Obama’s rhetoric and practice on energy and climate change from his first presidential campaign trail in 2008 until the end of his second mandate in 2016, in order to assess whether he ‘walked the talk’ on environmental matters. Moreover, it considers Obama’s position as an environmentalist, by looking at the energy security discourse and at its implications for climate change and global security.Show less
Fossil fuel industry giants in the United States like ExxonMobil sponsor contrarian science to distort the public image of the (virtually non-existing) debate on whether anthropogenic global...Show moreFossil fuel industry giants in the United States like ExxonMobil sponsor contrarian science to distort the public image of the (virtually non-existing) debate on whether anthropogenic global warming exists. The efforts of this so-called ―Denial Machine‖ seem to bear fruit: despite scientific consensus, Americans remain divided on the issue of anthropogenic climate change. Liberal Democrats are more likely to follow the consensus view (79% believes the planet is warming mostly due to human activity), whereas only 15% of the Conservative Republicans supposes this to be the case. Dunlap and McCright argue that conservative media outlets function as an echo chamber for the contrarian voices of this Denial Machine. Liisa Antilla argues that the conservative media is not the only side responsible for this echoing—in their quest for ―journalistic balance,‖ mainstream and progressive news outlets (including the New York Times) have also presented contrarian voices as ―experts‖ in the past. With these insights in mind, this study maps the climate change discourses and source-use of two opposing poles in the U.S. media landscape in the months prior to Trump‘s election: the New York Times on the Liberal Democrat side; news weblog Breitbart on the Conservative Republican side. The results show that these opposing poles conduct their climate change reporting on completely different levels: while the conservative Breitbart seems stuck in denial, hence condemned to the debate-level, the liberal Times has passed this level by accepting consensus and focusing its reporting on the consequences of climate change. In addition, this study also concludes that the Times no longer functions as an echo chamber for contrarian voices for the sake of journalistic balance, while Breitbart, by giving pseudo scientists space to directly publish on their platform regularly, not only functions as echo chamber, but also as the vocal cords of contrarian voices.Show less
Literary analysis of Liu Cixin's Remembrance of the Earth's Past series. The thesis comprises summaries of all three books in the series, and a literary analysis of what the author believes to be...Show moreLiterary analysis of Liu Cixin's Remembrance of the Earth's Past series. The thesis comprises summaries of all three books in the series, and a literary analysis of what the author believes to be the political message in those books. This is further supported by a literature review on the field of science fiction studies and textual proof of said claims.Show less
