Framing the Future: A Tasmanian Case Study

Journalism plays a vital role in dissemination proposition and ideas for the future. Without a range of options in the public sphere society cannot make informed decisions about the future. As such, this category of reporting, which is termed 'solutions journalism' or 'future-focused journalism', is vital for democratic decision making. It is also an important source of public optimism - counteracting disaster, crime and corruption reporting that pervades news bulletins.

However, some consider future-focused journalism to be limited and distorted by powerful interests - restricting the range of options and sources of propositions. In response to this critique, and the apparent gap in the academic literature, this research seeks to shed light on some of these lingering doubts. Focusing on a 2014 sample of Tasmanian solutions journalism, this seminar will examine whose voices were most prominent and how this reporting framed. This research pursues an innovated framing methodology, combining a cognitive linguistic approach, centred on metaphoric and idiomatic language, with an analysis of symbolic capital, and discovers links between metaphorical reasoning and a class-based evaluation of leadership in proposing and discussing Tasmania's future.