Framing Alaskans and Greenlanders on the Melting Arctic Ice

Authors

  • Neal T. Eason University of Washington Tacoma

Keywords:

Alaska, anthropogenic climate change, Arctic, communication, Greenland, Native American Tribes, newspaper framing

Abstract

The ice caps, glaciers, and sea ice of the Arctic are melting. Water levels are rising, CO2 is escaping the permafrost, and wildlife are  struggling to adapt amid die offs, but what about the people who live on the frontlines? I looked at the largest papers in Alaska and Greenland and found out there is more in common between the people at the top of the world than I expected. When your family can watch the glaciers disappearing year by year, there isn't room for skepticism. The facts are the facts, and while there are no solutions to be found here, the people who make their homes in the Arctic are watching for the consequences of anthropogenic climate change as it reshapes the lands and the seas.

Author Biography

Neal T. Eason, University of Washington Tacoma

Neal Thomas Eason is a 33-year-old Communications major at the University of Washington Tacoma campus. He prefers to be addressed by his middle name and uses He/Him. He has lived in Tacoma for most of his life, with the exception of a year spent in Ruidoso, New Mexico while a sophomore in high school, and four years spent with the United States Marine Corps, where he was deployed to Okinawa, Mt. Fuji, Hokkaido, the Philippines, Korea, and Virginia: not an exceptional K-12 student, but got his act together in the Marines. 

Eason took a year off to adjust to being a civilian again, only doing part-time work before enrolling at Tacoma Community College where he received an Associates Degree in Liberal Arts. The COVID-19 Pandemic hit just after he graduated from TCC, and he spent the pandemic out of school and taking care of his retired mother. In winter 2025, Eason enrolled at UWT, with his transfer credits from TCC, as a junior with his general education already satisfied and focusing completely on his major at UWT.

Course: TCOM 310 Environmental Issues and the Media: Money, Media, and Power

Instructor: Ellen Moore

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Published

2026-10-14

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 2 (2025): Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Neal T. Eason

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.