Abstract
Conflicts over land development, management, and conservation initiatives often arise where groups have different goals or priorities in terms of conservation. The media can play an essential dual role in these conflicts. Mass media offers insights into public opinion while shaping debates and public and decision-makers perceptions of issues. Moreover, all media is framed: groups and advocates can influence the attention an issue receives, define policy options, and amplify the voices of stakeholders. The National Park Service released land-use restrictions for the proposed development of Miami Wilds, a water park and shopping complex that was designated to be built in the imperiled Richmond Pine Rocklands ecosystem in South Florida. I conducted a frame analysis to compare article valence and stakeholder representation from both global and local newspaper articles. These stories were framed in terms of morality/ethics, public accountability, conflict/strategy, middle-way/alternative path, scientific/technical uncertainty, pandora’s box, deforestation, social progress, economic development, and public health. I found that stakeholders (‘NGOs’) with environmental protection values primarily used conflict/strategy, morality/ethics, and deforestation frames to portray the Miami Wilds unfavorably. In news media articles, the dominant frames were conflict/strategy and morality/ethics, which portray the decision-making process of Miami Wilds as riddled with tension between NGOs and the federal government. These frames indicate that the conflict over Miami Wilds stems from different values of recreation and wilderness protection that are being communicated by the media.