Discourses of environmental citizenship: How television teaches us to be green

This article explores the discursive construction of environmental citizenship in German and British public service television. We ask whether television discourse describes environmental protection as a matter of citizen duties or a question of individual rights, and we explore the extent to which the role of a global civil society is highlighted. While the themes of responsibility and civil society have a clear presence in our sample, they often appear in conjunction with the dominant themes of the free market and the autonomy of consumers. Placing television discourse in its sociopolitical context, the main argument of this article is that television discourse sustains a liberal approach to environmental politics, currently favoured by governments in Germany and Britain.