Rewilding tourism in the news: Power/knowledge and the Irish and UK news media discourses

This study investigates how complex power relations shape the knowledge about rewilding tourism produced by the news media in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. A multi-level Foucauldian discourse analysis with a socialist ecofeminist lens is adopted to evaluate online news articles about rewilding tourism across a 5-year period (2017-2022). By tracing the network of power relations across society, this micro-meso-macro-level discourse analysis reveals the discursive strategies, taken-for-granted norms, taboos, silences and subjugations shaping rewilding tourism knowledge. The results show how tourism is tapping into the growing public engagement with rewilding, while we fail to critically evaluate the longterm implications for future generations of the 'green grabbing' of land, primarily for the carbon credits market and incidental rewilding (eco)tourism. (R) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).