Constructing the Ring of Fire : the journalist's story ...

• Main Author: Turner, Logan
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2021
• Subjects: First Nations; James Bay
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0396672; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0396672

Situated deep in the homelands of First Nations in Treaty 9 territory in the James Bay Lowlands of northern Ontario, the Ring of Fire is a mineral-rich area discovered in 2007 and quickly declared by politicians and mining companies as Canada’s “next oilsands” and “the most promising mineral development opportunity in Ontario in over a century.” These bold declarations have been repeated over and again by political and economic actors, often without critical interrogation by journalists reporting on the mineral discovery. This begs the research question: how does the news media shape and construct the understanding of natural resource extraction projects within the Canadian context? Set within a complex web of competing claim-makers in the resource periphery of northern Ontario, this thesis conducts a content analysis of digital news stories published about the Ring of Fire by the publicly funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation between 2010 and 2018. The research finds that overwhelmingly the Ring of Fire ...