Media Portrayals of Environmental Harms Committed in the Iraq War

In the context of contemporary climate debates, the accessibility of valid, relevant, and appropriate information to the public beyond the academic community is important. War and conflict are often overlooked contributors to environmental harm and climate change broadly. Given this, the present study seeks to understand how environmental harms are portrayed in newspaper articles covering war, to gain some insight on how this public opinion may have been shaped. I examine coverage of the Iraq War via a content analysis. Articles were gathered and analyzed using inductive coding, which allowed me to identify mentions of environmental harms, oil, and economic interests. Results indicate that environmental harms were often present in articles but were not framed as harms by the authors. The study adds to the historical context from which we can analyze modern-day media portrayals of other conflicts in the same region.