Page 142 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

132 P. McCURDY

“Stelmach” for Alberta’s Conservative premier, “Knight” for his Energy
Minister and “Renner” for his Environment Minister. A long black sign
was placed on the ground in front of the installation; white capital letters
on the sign read “Get your head out of the tar sands”.
This symbolic protest was held at the cusp of what has become a per-
sistent and international campaign against bitumen development and
helped establish the ‘tar sands’ frame. In the time since these protests,
activists and other civil society stakeholders have manufactured and
exploited numerous political opportunities to contest tar/oil sands devel-
opment in the name of environmental protection, Aboriginal rights, and
stopping climate change. Meanwhile, industry stakeholders along with the
Alberta provincial and Canadian federal government have launched their
own campaigns, initiatives and counter narratives (Turner 2012).
This chapter views struggles over bitumen development and the struggle
over climate change as simultaneously material and mediated. From this
perspective, media—both social and legacy—function as key arenas,
resources and sites of information in the ongoing battle for the public’s
imagination (Castells 2009). In exploring this struggle, I want to apply and
extend Cammaerts’ (2012) concept of the mediation opportunity structure
to examine two broad activist logics which underwrite bitumen sands
campaigning. The first, the ‘logic of bearing witness’, operates through the
creation of ‘image events’ (Deluca 1999) employing spectacle and sym-
bolic direct action at oil/tar sands plants, mines and public events. Second,
‘the logic of celebrity’ examines how celebrities’ visits to the Alberta’s
bitumen sands and their remarks about them relate, inform, underwrite
and impact ‘tar sands’ activism using case studies of Neve Campbell, James
Cameron, Neil Young and Leonardo DiCaprio.

MEDIATION AND POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY
Contemporary political struggles are inevitably also mediated struggles in
which media representations of social and political issues operate as both
sites and sources of political contention (Castells 2009; Couldry 2013;
Silverstone 2007). Social movement scholars use the concept of ‘political
opportunity’ to identify moments of contention and their mobilization by
social movements (Tarrow 1998). However, as Cammaerts (2012) has
rightly argued, the role of media and communication within this per-
spective is woefully undertheorized. Addressing this lacuna, he has pro-
posed the idea of ‘mediation opportunity structures’ to conceptualize the