Layered Environmental Discourses: Media Representations of Transnational Extractivism in Zimbabwe

Abstract

ABSTRACT The increase in Chinese extractive activities in Zimbabwe has created antagonism between issues related to development and the environment. The antagonism has generated conflicting perspectives in the local media. This study aims to investigate how the Zimbabwean mainstream media construct environmental discourses surrounding Chinese transnational extractive operations and represent the social impacts of extractivism at local and national levels. Critical discourse analysis was conducted to analyse news articles published within one year from two state media and two private media organisations. The findings suggest while the Promethean discourse holds a hegemonic position in state media, the discourses of limits and environmental justice coexist and compete with the Promethean discourse in private media. The state media constructs Chinese extractive activities as being socially and environmentally responsible and in harmony with Zimbabwean national developmental visions. The private media, in contrast, transforms the complex systems of transnational extractivism into a human character who collaborates with the domestic ruling class to conduct an “organised crime” in the local communities. Environmental journalism operates as a biased tool to serve the interests of dominant groups, extending media polarisation beyond the political realm and perpetuating an oversimplified dichotomy that has been cautioned against in Africa–China studies.