1st Edition
Framing Environmental Disaster Environmental Advocacy and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
1. Blame Attribution and the Policy Process. 2. Blame-Casting: When Blame Precedes Wrongdoing. 3. Casting a Wide Net of Blame. 4. Policy Solutions Following Disaster. 5. Group Characteristics and Framing Strategies. 6. Blame-Casting in Multiple Media. 7. Impacts of Blame-Casting: Policy Responses to the Gulf Oil Spill. 8. Conclusions.
Biography
Melissa K. Merry is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville. Her research interests include environmental politics and policy, interest groups, and political communication. She has authored articles appearing in American Politics Research, Journal of Information Technology and Politics, and Environmental Politics, among other journals.
"Melissa K. Merry offers a fresh examination in Framing Environmental Disaster: Environmental Advocacy and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, using content analysis that includes the innovative use of blogs, emails, news stories and Congressional Testimonies. She discusses how interest groups use events and crises to leverage their cause. Scholars, practitioners and students will benefit from her contribution to the field disaster management and public policy."
—Mary D. Bruce, Governors State University
"Melissa Merry’s study of rhetorical strategies used by environmental groups during the Deepwater Horizon is a marker in the systematic study of the framing of arguments in politics. The study will become a model of how to study political rhetoric systematically outside of the confines of the political psychology laboratory. It allows a much firmer analysis of the role of blame attribution in politics."
—Bryan D. Jones, University of Texas-Austin
