| Abstract [eng] |
The topic of biodiversity loss is increasingly becoming an alarming risk. As communicated by European Commission (2024b), “an average of around 25 per cent of species in assessed animal and plant groups are threatened, suggesting that around 1 million species already face extinction”. This problem seems to be affecting many different fields (economical, societal, environmental) and is influenced by a variety of different factors such as “changes in land and sea use, habitat destruction, overexploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and invasive species”. The European Union is putting in an effort to mitigate this problem by presenting a new strategy meant to reduce biodiversity loss. This is clearly emphasized in EU documents such as the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 (European Commission, 2024a), the EU Habitats Directive (European Commission, 2024b), the Nature Restoration Law (European Commission, 2024c), and the European Green Deal (European Commission, 2024d). Lithuania, being a part of EU, adapts to its policies to promote environmental restoration. However, the questions such as if the adopted strategies are helping in mitigating biodiversity loss, what is societal concern about these issues, why this topic seemingly gathering such low engagement from the Lithuanian public, how media is reflecting biodiversity loss, are still open and need further exploration. The lack of awareness can be partially attributed to the way that the topic of biodiversity loss/decline is communicated by the Lithuanian news media, which is what this thesis will be exploring. Thus, the main research question of the thesis is as follows: How is Lithuanian news media communicating about the topic of biodiversity loss? This master’s thesis aims to analyse how news media is communicating to the public about the topic of biodiversity loss in Lithuania. The aims are being reached through the several objectives: (1) To explore the theoretical frameworks that might be used for analysis of biodiversity loss communication; (2) To create the methodology for biodiversity loss communication in news media empirical analysis; (3) To empirically explore how news media is communicating to the public about the topic of biodiversity loss in Lithuania. Research methods: literature review, news media content analysis. The structure of the thesis includes 4 major parts. Firstly, the thesis presents the theoretical framework that might be used for analysis of biodiversity loss communication. Secondly, thesis explains methodology for biodiversity loss communication empirical analysis. Finally, it discusses empirical evidence on how news media is communicating to the public about the topic of biodiversity loss in Lithuania. It looks into how the topic of biodiversity is framed and presented to the public, showcases the communication strategies employed by the news media and its correlations to the narratives. |
