Discourse, Context, and Consequence: An Analysis of the Discourses of Biodiversity and nature in Three Popular Magazines Ryan Southwick Abstract Biodiversity and nature are portrayed differently in many discourses, and thus can have many potential effects on people’s views of them. Different material will have different discourses of biodiversity and nature based on what the desires of the people or person promoting that view are. I studied the discourses of biodiversity and nature in three popular magazines; National Geographic, Field and Stream, and Travel and Leisure. The discourses found in these magazines were coded using the biodiversity discourses defined and analyzed by Stephen Kellert. The types of discourses found differed from magazine to magazine, and all of the discourse distributions differed substantially from Kellert’s distribution of the US public’s ideas of biodiversity and nature. The magazine discourse distributions also differed between magazines. No two discourse distributions, Kellert’s or the magazines’, were statistically similar. Statistically significant results of this were calculated using chi-square analysis testing. I wanted at first to do this research to gain insights on why the magazines use the discourses they do to represent biodiversity and nature, and what consequences those discourses have. However, I could not do that without first examining what discourses the magazines use, and how often. So the results of my research are a stepping stone to that future goal of discovering what it is that media does to influence the public on biodiversity and nature, why they do it, and the consequences those actions have.Introduction My research drew on the work of Stephen Kellert who identified and analyzed nine discourses of biodiversity that are prevalent in US society (Kellert 1996). Stephen Kellert is a professor of Social Ecology in the school of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. He spent 20 years researching the discourses the United States public holds of biodiversity and nature. For my project, first I examined if Kellert's findings on the respective frequencies of the discourses in the US population were also found in three different kinds of popular print media: a nature magazine - National Geographic, a hunting magazine - Field and Stream, and a travel magazine - Travel and Leisure. I hypothesized that the distribution of the discourses in the magazines would differ from the frequencies that Kellert found, reflecting the content of each magazine. Specifically, I expected to find that based on content, the following discourses would have the highest frequency: for National Geographic, moralistic; for Field and Stream, dominionistic; and for Travel and Leisure, aesthetic. The reason for this difference could be that the magazines have a particular bias based on what they are trying to sell (the content of their magazines) to their particular readers. That is why I expected the magazines’ discourses of biodiversity and nature to differ from those of the US public as found by Kellert. Since Kellert sometimes seems to conflate nature and biodiversity, I coded for both in my research, and compared the results of the frequencies of the discourses. Kellert includes ideas of nature in his discourses of biodiversity, and that is how his data are constructed, therefore, I constructed my data that way as well. My motivation for this research was to understand why magazines are portraying biodiversity and nature in specific ways - specifically, I wanted to understand the repercussions of using certain discourses of biodiversity and nature. In order to do this, I examined what exactly National Geographic, Field and Stream, and Travel and Leisure are doing in terms of representing biodiversity and nature. In other words, I studied what discourses the magazines use, and how often they use them, so I could understand what they say about biodiversity and nature. I also try to explore some potential consequences of these discourses. Before I go any further, it is important to define some of the terms I mentioned above that are significant to my research. The definition of discourse, and how I defined both biodiversity and nature for the purposes of this project will be discussed next. I specify how I defined biodiversity and nature because they are controversial issues and difficult to define. Anydefinition I put for either could be contested, but these are the definitions I adopted for these terms for this research. Discourse can be described as written or spoken conversation, and the thinking that underlies it (Johnson 1995). It is a statement, or group of statements which provides a language for talking about - a way of representing - a particular kind of knowledge about a topic (Hall et al. 1996). It is important to note that these “statements” do not always have to be spoken or written, discourses can also manifest in images, actions, practices, cultural norms, and many other things. Johnson (1995) says that it is through discourse that people construct what they experience as reality, and people act on these constructions, and in this way, discourses have material effects because the ways people talk and think about the world shapes how they behave in it. Discourse is about the production of knowledge through language. When statements about a particular topic are made within a particular discourse, the discourse makes it possible to construct the topic in a certain way, and it also limits the other ways in which the topic can be constructed (Hall et al. 1996). Furthermore, discourses are culturally and historically contingent, therefore, what may seem true to one group of people may be false to another group (Foucault, 1984). An example of discourse to illustrate these points comes from the work of Fairhead and Leach (1995). They studied the region of Kissidougou in Guinea, West Africa and how discourses dictated how westerners viewed the area and the indigenous people. The indigenous tribes used a ‘slash and burn’ system of agriculture - actually named swidden - which led many westerners who came to the area to believe that the indigenous tribes were degrading the environment and impeding forest growth. The reason westerners thought this is that there are prominent discourses in western culture that are taught in schools and other institutions, that ‘people are bad for