A dangerous space? Unpacking state and media discourses on the Arctic

Abstract

“Race for the Arctic” and the “New Cold War” are common newspaper headlines when it comes to coverage of Arctic affairs. In popular media, the Arctic is often portrayed as a zone of potential conflict – with unresolved boundary issues, rapidly changing sea ice cover and tempting natural resources forming a potentially explosive political cocktail. On the other hand, the region possesses a strong track record of post-Cold War peace and cooperation and political leaders and civil servants representing Arctic states have, in recent years, become a coordinated chorus extolling the peacefulness of the region. This article illustrates how the Arctic is represented as a zone of potential conflict in the media through a sampling of international media and an in-depth case study of how the potential for Arctic conflict is discussed in a mainstream Russian newspaper. I argue that these different ‘framings’ or representations of Arctic politics have significance for the kind of politics that can be pursued in the region and discuss how a certain kind of geopolitical reasoning contributes to seeing the Arctic as a latent space of danger and conflict.