Introduction: Extraction, National Development and Environmental News in Twenty-first-century South America

Abstract

A region where many local and national economies are based on natural resource extractive activities to meet global demand, South America provides an important laboratory for understanding the social construction of news regarding contestations over the promotion of extractivism as a national development strategy. Often residents living in extraction zones must deal with not only environmental degradation but also health impacts and loss of culture and heritage. Focusing on historical interfaces of news, environment, ideas of modernity and development, and media–state relations, Pinto, Prado and Tirado offer an introduction to the social construction of news that is provided to mass audiences in South America, and discuss the pressures that impact journalism in the region.