“Activism in paradise”: A critical discourse analysis of a public
Tracking number
relations campaign against genetic engineering.
ICA-15-10063
19
of 1950s and 1960s). In this campaign, being self-sufficient means a collection of individuals
and small businesses resisting the “take-over” by big business, threatened on a global level by
interests such as Monsanto.
The GE Free campaign also depends on a conceptualization of political identity on two levels.
Firstly, the campaign constructs New Zealand as a collection of individuals with the
democratic right to debate the issues and influence national public policy. At the same time,
New Zealand is conceptualized as a small nation/global participant in international world
affairs with freedom of choice in terms of the right to be different from other countries, such
as the United States. This choice is represented in both the preferred economic direction for
New Zealand’s primary produce, and in deeply held environmental principles in a re-
articulation of the stances taken over the Springbok tour and New Zealand's nuclear-free
position of the 1980s. Both issues similarly initially divided the nation, while the nuclear-free
stance pitted New Zealand in a 'David and Goliath' stand against the might of the United
States (Foote, 1999; Lange, 1990; White, 1998). Citizen activism at the time of the Springbok
tour of New Zealand in 1981, and New Zealand’s nuclear-free stance in the 1980s, resulted in
the legitimation of an ideological stance that successfully pressured the governments at that
time to adopt public policy consistent with these viewpoints. The focus of the GE Free
campaign involved similar campaign tactics, to resist the official discourse of the time, with
the addition of the web-based co-ordination of action.
Finally, New Zealanders are represented as politically active, unafraid to stage political
protests and take a different ideological position from the positions frequently articulated in
normalized discourses internationally. The web-based activism of the GE Free coalition as a
means of issues management in this campaign is consistent with Roper’s (2002) findings. The
Convention