A Spin On Paradise:
Newspaper Coverage of Grassroots Advocacy in Hawaii
Andrew Palmore
Bachelor's of Arts in Environmental Studies
May 2002
The Waiahole taro fields, far down Kamehameha highway on the East side of Oahu, Hawaii, are as secluded as they are beautiful. Eighty years ago the Waiahole stream and was diverted using an extensive ditch system to irrigate sugarcane on the Leeward side of the island. When Hawaii's sugar cane industry went under in 1985, the Waiahole taro farmers began petitioning for the return of the water to the Waiahole stream. However, their seclusion on the rural East side forced farmers to devise effective an communication strategy, with the help of Earthjustice (formerly Sierra Club Legal Defense), to build islandwide support for their mission.
On the South East tip of Oahu the Ka Iwi Coastline was under threat of development. Though rugged and untouched, the dry coastline is easily overlooked by a residents and visitors driving 40 miles an hour down Kalanianaole Highway. It took a group of East Honolulu residents, organized as the Ka Iwi Action Council (KIAC), to draw public and government attention to the value of the coastline and eventually preserve the area.
Both these advocacy groups had different, though highly effective, communications strategies. While only a part of their overall communications strategies, the mainstream media played the essential role of sparking islandwide interest in these two issues.
This paper looks at how Hawaii's mainstream newspapers presented the positions of these advocacy groups and the issues they were involved with. I first explore the history of Hawaii's grassroots environmental movement, comparing it with the U.S. mainland grassroots movement, to determine some of the challenges Hawaii's advocates face in communicating their issues. Next, based on in-depth interviews, I outline the communication strategies used by each advocacy group, draw out keys to successful communication, and discern what role the newspaper media had in their overall strategies. Finally, I analyze and code the newspaper media coverage of the Waiahole water and the Ka Iwi Coastline issues. Closely analyzing the newspaper text, I show how the media chose to portray the advocates' missions (relative to the advocates' initial communications strategies).
Comparing themes across three research methods (background, interviews, media analysis) reveals how advocates can better utilize the media and possible changes the media can make when writing about environmental and other social issues. Themes are "certain phrases, events, activities, behaviors, ideas, or other phenomena [that] occur repeatedly in the data" (LeCompte, Schensul 46). The process of organizing these themes into a framework of categories that is consistent with the whole of the data is called coding. Codes are described as "names or symbols used to stand for a group of similar items, ideas, or phenomena that the researcher has noticed in his or her data set" (LeCompte, Schensul 55). By comparing recurring themes across the three research methods I triangulate the data to develop findings and ultimately recommend strategies.
My thesis questions
are:
I conclude by presenting
"best practice guidelines," showing how grassroots environmental advocates
throughout Hawaii can make use of the media to effectively communicate their
causes. These recommendations include:
Recommendations for Hawaii's
Mass Media
Recommendations
for Hawaii's Grassroots Environmental Advocates