Cuddly Koalas, Beautiful Brumbies, Exotic Olives: Fighting for Media Selection in the Attention Economy
Phil Bagust
School of Communication , Information and New Media, University of South Australia , Adelaide , Australia
Abstract
Darwinian selection may not be dead, but there is a new kid on the block, one that, at least for scientists and conservationists, must seem perverse, fickle and frustrating. Certainly it works on timescales that seem mercurial compared to the geologic ‘punctuated equilibria' of natural selection. This new kid is ‘media selection'. When I refer to media selection I really mean the social factors that come into play when complex, global, highly mediated, hybridised, fashion-savvy consumer societies enter the debates—as they often must—surrounding conservation and land management decisions. These social factors obviously impact on the outcomes that might otherwise ensue if biodiversity imperatives were somehow left only to ‘the experts'.
This paper summarises and contrasts the unfolding of three discourses of current conservation concern and media interest in South Australia :
• The management of ‘feral koalas' in Flinders Chase on K angaroo Island ;
• The culling of wild horses in Coffin Bay National Park ; and
• The spread of the European olive as both environmental weed and marker of cultural sophistication.
The contradictory media coverage of these issues, and the divergent public and government responses to them, suggest that management decisions taken on a ‘biodiversity science only' basis—especially when they involve charismatic megafauna and flora—are going to be increasingly difficult to pull off in the future. There seems to be an inherent contradiction between the drivers of biogeographic diversity (time, isolation, distance, unique characteristics of site) and the realities of a ‘weedy' mobile, affluent and increasingly hybridised global society where decisions are mediated by spectacular images and consumer desire.
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