Hunting the beast on youtube: The framing of nature in social media

Abstract

Humans’ perceived relationship to nature and non-human lifeforms is fundamental for sustainable development; different framings of nature as commodity, as threat, as sacred etc. imply different responses to future challenges. The body of research on nature representations in various symbolic contexts is growing, but the ways in which nature is framed by people in the everyday has received scant attention. This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the framing of nature by studying how wild-boar hunting is depicted on YouTube. The qualitative frame analysis identified three interrelated frames depicting hunting as battle, as consumption, and as privilege, all of which constitute and are constituted by the underlying notion of human as superior to nature. It is suggested that these hegemonic nature frames suppress more constructive ways of framing the human-nature relationship, but also that the identification of such potential counter-hegemonic frames enables their discursive manifestation.