Shane Gunster
Biographic Data
| ID | 455353 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shane Gunster |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shane |
| FAMILY NAME | Gunster |
| SIGNATURE | GUNSTER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Simon Fraser University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4531-3364 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 77 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
"Second Nature"
Electric vehicles for climate, a green economy, or independence? Comparing policy discourse in newspapers across three Canadian provinces
Connective Action, Digital Engagement and Network-Building
This article explores how competing discursive and political formations about climate change structure and circulate in social media by mapping a year of climate-related Facebook posts and links by Canadian civil society actors. Drawing upon the concept of connective action, it traces the efficacy and impact of the social media strategies of actors favoring stronger climate action against those aiming to delay or block such action. Distinguishing…
Curating Climate (In)Action
Background: Canadian civil society organizations engage in strategic news-sharing to shape engagement with climate change, generating audience subsidies for news outlets. Analysis: This study analyzes the actors involved in such news sharing on Facebook and the engagement they generate for news genres, outlets, and authors. It maps the networks through which those favouring stronger climate action and those delaying such action subsidize differen…
Challenging Petro-Nationalism
Canada’s fossil fuel industry and its supporters have developed robust, aggressive, and affectively powerful forms of petro-nationalism to promote extractivism as a public good and demonize critics as anti-Canadian. This article investigates how industry critics and pipeline opponents have responded to this appropriation and instrumentalization of Canadian national identity. It conducts a multi-modal survey of the Facebook communication strategie…
Fire and Climate
Background: Extreme weather events are intensifying with climate change, offering opportunities to raise the public urgency of this issue. The media’s role in communicating this connection is crucial. Analysis: This article analyzes media coverage of wildfires over a nine-year period in British Columbia focusing on how they are linked to climate change, in particular, during the 2017 and 2018 record-breaking fire seasons. Conclusion and implicati…
Fire and Climate
Background: Extreme weather events are intensifying with climate change, offering opportunities to raise the public urgency of this issue. The media’s role in communicating this connection is crucial. Analysis: This article analyzes media coverage of wildfires over a nine-year period in British Columbia focusing on how they are linked to climate change, in particular, during the 2017 and 2018 record-breaking fire seasons. Conclusion and implicati…
(De)legitimating extractivism
Most scholarly accounts of social licence define it as a public relations strategy to legitimate resource development. In Canadian pipeline politics, however, it has had the opposite effect, crystallizing widespread concerns about industry capture of regulatory processes and affirming the democratic rights of local communities. This assessment of the concept’s critical, counter-hegemonic potential to challenge the policies, practices and logic of…
Climate Hypocrisies
This paper conducts a comparative study of how the idea of hypocrisy was invoked in media coverage of climate change in 12 newspapers from four countries (Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) between 2005 and 2015. It develops the concepts, and explores the characteristics, of three distinct types of climate hypocrisy: personalized (which attacks the moral character of individuals based on inconsistencies between their st…
From Public Relations to Mob Rule
Background Social licence refers to the idea that corporations and governments require broad public support for resource development projects from affected communities, citizens, and stakeholders. Talk of social licence has become pervasive in media discussions of resource development in Canada and especially prominent in debates around oil pipelines. Analysis This article explores changing Canadian newspaper coverage of social licence over the p…
From Public Relations to Mob Rule
Background Social licence refers to the idea that corporations and governments require broad public support for resource development projects from affected communities, citizens, and stakeholders. Talk of social licence has become pervasive in media discussions of resource development in Canada and especially prominent in debates around oil pipelines. Analysis This article explores changing Canadian newspaper coverage of social licence over the p…
Communicating Power
This changes everything
Given the public attention and debate this book has attracted, its basic argument is probably familiar to most readers of Environmental Communication. Simply put, Klein argues that the structures
Journalism and Climate Crisis
“Ethereal Carbon”
This paper examines the provincial government of British Columbia's recent proposal of building a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry, in which natural gas extracted through hydraulic fracturing will be liquefied and then exported to Asian markets. Drawing upon the growing literature on energopower, petro-state, and petro-culture, selected texts and images from “LNG in BC”—the project's official branding website—were analyzed through a multimoda…
Storylines in the Sands
This article presents a critical discourse analysis of the principal storylines through which the Calgary Herald framed the oil sands between May 1, 2010, and May 31, 2011. The analysis reveals that rather than avoid coverage of environmental protests and critiques, the Herald’s narratives used these events to portray the oil and gas industry (and the province and people of Alberta) as victims of an aggressive and well-funded global environmental…
Covering Copenhagen
In December 2009, considerable media attention was devoted to climate change as global leaders gathered in Copenhagen for a two-week summit to negotiate an extension to the Kyoto Protocol. This article conducts a discourse and content analysis of how regional media in British Columbia covered the event, with a particular focus on how climate politics was framed. A wide range of sources encompassing different media and different ownership structur…
Ears Wide Shut
Although scholars have identified political talk radio (PTR) as an important site of political socialization, the current literature has largely failed to examine the political relevance of PTR's rhetorical strategies and has virtually ignored Canadian PTR altogether. This article addresses these gaps by analyzingAdler On Line, Canada's only nationally syndicated commercial PTR program, to show thathowCanadian PTR talks, particularly its use of p…
Listening to Labour
In October 2005, B.C. public school teachers conducted a two-and-a-half-week illegal strike that attracted widespread support from the public. This article conducts a comparative content and discourse analysis of the news coverage provided by the leading provincial outlets in three media types: The Vancouver Sun (newspaper), the News Hour on Global (television), and The Bill Good Show (political talk radio). The Bill Good Show’s open-ended, parti…
On the Road to Nowhere”
With the fanatic care with which Irish monks once ornamented the Book of Kells, glowing images of youthful beauty and athletic prowess, of racial harmony and exalted fellowship, are herein fluidly
All about Nothing”
Drawing on Lawrence Grossberg’s work on affect, difference, and postmodernity, this article discusses Seinfeldas emblematic of new cultural forms that produce temporary structures of difference out of a general indifference or sameness. The author begins by discussing how incessant commodification of difference in advertising and consumer culture compromises the ability and desire of many people to make stable and lasting investments of affect in…
Capitalizing on Culture
Building on the work of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Capitalizing on Culture presents an innovative, accessible, and timely exploration of critical theory in a cultural landscape dominated by capital. Despite the increasing prevalence of commodification as a dominant factor in the production, promotion, and consumption of most forms of mass culture, many in the cultural studies field have failed to engage systematically either with culture…
You Belong Outside
You Belong Outside':Advertising, Nature, and the SUV Shane Gunster (bio) And which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street, pedestrians, children and cyclists? —Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia Images of nature are among the most common signifiers of utopia in commercial discourse, tirelessly making the case that a certain commodity or brand will enable an escape from the malaise and drudgery o…
Revisiting the Culture Industry Thesis
Ears Wide Shut
Although scholars have identified political talk radio (PTR) as an important site of political socialization, the current literature has largely failed to examine the political relevance of PTR's rhetorical strategies and has virtually ignored Canadian PTR altogether. This article addresses these gaps by analyzingAdler On Line, Canada's only nationally syndicated commercial PTR program, to show thathowCanadian PTR talks, particularly its use of p…
You Belong Outside
You Belong Outside':Advertising, Nature, and the SUV Shane Gunster (bio) And which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street, pedestrians, children and cyclists? —Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia Images of nature are among the most common signifiers of utopia in commercial discourse, tirelessly making the case that a certain commodity or brand will enable an escape from the malaise and drudgery o…
Revisiting the Culture Industry Thesis
(De)legitimating extractivism
Most scholarly accounts of social licence define it as a public relations strategy to legitimate resource development. In Canadian pipeline politics, however, it has had the opposite effect, crystallizing widespread concerns about industry capture of regulatory processes and affirming the democratic rights of local communities. This assessment of the concept’s critical, counter-hegemonic potential to challenge the policies, practices and logic of…
On the Road to Nowhere”
With the fanatic care with which Irish monks once ornamented the Book of Kells, glowing images of youthful beauty and athletic prowess, of racial harmony and exalted fellowship, are herein fluidly
Listening to Labour
In October 2005, B.C. public school teachers conducted a two-and-a-half-week illegal strike that attracted widespread support from the public. This article conducts a comparative content and discourse analysis of the news coverage provided by the leading provincial outlets in three media types: The Vancouver Sun (newspaper), the News Hour on Global (television), and The Bill Good Show (political talk radio). The Bill Good Show’s open-ended, parti…
Electric vehicles for climate, a green economy, or independence? Comparing policy discourse in newspapers across three Canadian provinces
All about Nothing”
Drawing on Lawrence Grossberg’s work on affect, difference, and postmodernity, this article discusses Seinfeldas emblematic of new cultural forms that produce temporary structures of difference out of a general indifference or sameness. The author begins by discussing how incessant commodification of difference in advertising and consumer culture compromises the ability and desire of many people to make stable and lasting investments of affect in…
Revisiting the Culture Industry Thesis
Capitalizing on Culture
Building on the work of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Capitalizing on Culture presents an innovative, accessible, and timely exploration of critical theory in a cultural landscape dominated by capital. Despite the increasing prevalence of commodification as a dominant factor in the production, promotion, and consumption of most forms of mass culture, many in the cultural studies field have failed to engage systematically either with culture…
You Belong Outside
You Belong Outside':Advertising, Nature, and the SUV Shane Gunster (bio) And which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street, pedestrians, children and cyclists? —Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia Images of nature are among the most common signifiers of utopia in commercial discourse, tirelessly making the case that a certain commodity or brand will enable an escape from the malaise and drudgery o…
All about Nothing”
Drawing on Lawrence Grossberg’s work on affect, difference, and postmodernity, this article discusses Seinfeldas emblematic of new cultural forms that produce temporary structures of difference out of a general indifference or sameness. The author begins by discussing how incessant commodification of difference in advertising and consumer culture compromises the ability and desire of many people to make stable and lasting investments of affect in…
On the Road to Nowhere”
With the fanatic care with which Irish monks once ornamented the Book of Kells, glowing images of youthful beauty and athletic prowess, of racial harmony and exalted fellowship, are herein fluidly
Listening to Labour
In October 2005, B.C. public school teachers conducted a two-and-a-half-week illegal strike that attracted widespread support from the public. This article conducts a comparative content and discourse analysis of the news coverage provided by the leading provincial outlets in three media types: The Vancouver Sun (newspaper), the News Hour on Global (television), and The Bill Good Show (political talk radio). The Bill Good Show’s open-ended, parti…
Covering Copenhagen
In December 2009, considerable media attention was devoted to climate change as global leaders gathered in Copenhagen for a two-week summit to negotiate an extension to the Kyoto Protocol. This article conducts a discourse and content analysis of how regional media in British Columbia covered the event, with a particular focus on how climate politics was framed. A wide range of sources encompassing different media and different ownership structur…
Ears Wide Shut
Although scholars have identified political talk radio (PTR) as an important site of political socialization, the current literature has largely failed to examine the political relevance of PTR's rhetorical strategies and has virtually ignored Canadian PTR altogether. This article addresses these gaps by analyzingAdler On Line, Canada's only nationally syndicated commercial PTR program, to show thathowCanadian PTR talks, particularly its use of p…
Storylines in the Sands
This article presents a critical discourse analysis of the principal storylines through which the Calgary Herald framed the oil sands between May 1, 2010, and May 31, 2011. The analysis reveals that rather than avoid coverage of environmental protests and critiques, the Herald’s narratives used these events to portray the oil and gas industry (and the province and people of Alberta) as victims of an aggressive and well-funded global environmental…
“Ethereal Carbon”
This paper examines the provincial government of British Columbia's recent proposal of building a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry, in which natural gas extracted through hydraulic fracturing will be liquefied and then exported to Asian markets. Drawing upon the growing literature on energopower, petro-state, and petro-culture, selected texts and images from “LNG in BC”—the project's official branding website—were analyzed through a multimoda…
This changes everything
Given the public attention and debate this book has attracted, its basic argument is probably familiar to most readers of Environmental Communication. Simply put, Klein argues that the structures
Journalism and Climate Crisis
Climate Hypocrisies
This paper conducts a comparative study of how the idea of hypocrisy was invoked in media coverage of climate change in 12 newspapers from four countries (Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) between 2005 and 2015. It develops the concepts, and explores the characteristics, of three distinct types of climate hypocrisy: personalized (which attacks the moral character of individuals based on inconsistencies between their st…
From Public Relations to Mob Rule
Background Social licence refers to the idea that corporations and governments require broad public support for resource development projects from affected communities, citizens, and stakeholders. Talk of social licence has become pervasive in media discussions of resource development in Canada and especially prominent in debates around oil pipelines. Analysis This article explores changing Canadian newspaper coverage of social licence over the p…
From Public Relations to Mob Rule
Background Social licence refers to the idea that corporations and governments require broad public support for resource development projects from affected communities, citizens, and stakeholders. Talk of social licence has become pervasive in media discussions of resource development in Canada and especially prominent in debates around oil pipelines. Analysis This article explores changing Canadian newspaper coverage of social licence over the p…
Communicating Power
(De)legitimating extractivism
Most scholarly accounts of social licence define it as a public relations strategy to legitimate resource development. In Canadian pipeline politics, however, it has had the opposite effect, crystallizing widespread concerns about industry capture of regulatory processes and affirming the democratic rights of local communities. This assessment of the concept’s critical, counter-hegemonic potential to challenge the policies, practices and logic of…
Challenging Petro-Nationalism
Canada’s fossil fuel industry and its supporters have developed robust, aggressive, and affectively powerful forms of petro-nationalism to promote extractivism as a public good and demonize critics as anti-Canadian. This article investigates how industry critics and pipeline opponents have responded to this appropriation and instrumentalization of Canadian national identity. It conducts a multi-modal survey of the Facebook communication strategie…
Fire and Climate
Background: Extreme weather events are intensifying with climate change, offering opportunities to raise the public urgency of this issue. The media’s role in communicating this connection is crucial. Analysis: This article analyzes media coverage of wildfires over a nine-year period in British Columbia focusing on how they are linked to climate change, in particular, during the 2017 and 2018 record-breaking fire seasons. Conclusion and implicati…
Fire and Climate
Background: Extreme weather events are intensifying with climate change, offering opportunities to raise the public urgency of this issue. The media’s role in communicating this connection is crucial. Analysis: This article analyzes media coverage of wildfires over a nine-year period in British Columbia focusing on how they are linked to climate change, in particular, during the 2017 and 2018 record-breaking fire seasons. Conclusion and implicati…
Connective Action, Digital Engagement and Network-Building
This article explores how competing discursive and political formations about climate change structure and circulate in social media by mapping a year of climate-related Facebook posts and links by Canadian civil society actors. Drawing upon the concept of connective action, it traces the efficacy and impact of the social media strategies of actors favoring stronger climate action against those aiming to delay or block such action. Distinguishing…
Curating Climate (In)Action
Background: Canadian civil society organizations engage in strategic news-sharing to shape engagement with climate change, generating audience subsidies for news outlets. Analysis: This study analyzes the actors involved in such news sharing on Facebook and the engagement they generate for news genres, outlets, and authors. It maps the networks through which those favouring stronger climate action and those delaying such action subsidize differen…
Electric vehicles for climate, a green economy, or independence? Comparing policy discourse in newspapers across three Canadian provinces
"Second Nature"
Political science (20 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Politics (13 works) · Law (9 works) · Business (8 works) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (8 works) · Media studies (8 works) · Climate change (5 works) · Economics (5 works)