Norway’s Arctic conundrum: Sustainable Development in the Norwegian media discourse

Abstract: This thesis concludes that the discourse surrounding the Arctic in the Norwegian press has a prevailing focus on resource extraction and resource demands, and that the term “sustainable development” is rarely being employed. At the same time, there is an increase in the amount of times the topics climate change and environment are discussed in the same articles that discuss oil, gas and resource extraction. This indicates that in the post-petroleum and “green shift” era that Norway has entered, these discourses now demand a joint discussion, rather than two separate discourses and topics. Looking at how Norway might act in the Arctic in the future, this can indicate that these focus areas will lay the foundation for possible action in the region as well. The background of the study was to obtain an understanding of how Norway deals with its conundrum of contradictory roles as an advocate for sustainable development and as an oil and gas producer. This was done through an investigation of how the Arctic, and especially sustainable development in the Arctic, is framed in the Norwegian press. By looking at the media discourse surrounding the topic, it is possible to get an understanding of how the region is framed in Norway, and subsequently how Norway as an Arctic actor will act in the future. Social constructionism, critical discourse analysis, mediatisation and framing theory make up the theoretical underpinnings of the thesis, and content analysis with a sequential process of three steps is employed to analyse the material from a bird’s-eye view to a very specific analysis.