Critical discourse analysis reveals the portrayal of common brushtail possums as threats in online media, indicating deeper environmental tensions.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Australian brushtail possum ( Trichosurus vulpecula ) is widely reviled as an icon of environmental destruction. This paper employs critical discourse analysis to examine how the possum is constructed as a pest within online media. Depicted as non‐native, overconsuming, and proliferative, the possum emerges as a villain in antithesis to the natural world. This paper argues that such discourse reflects not only the possum's threat to biosecurity but also deeper tensions within capitalist and settler‐colonial ways of relating to nature.
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Evans et al. (2026) studied this question.
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