The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill was relatively small, yet generated significant society reverberations the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill was unambiguously large, but resulted in only a few societal rumblings. Both were often labelled crises, disasters, and/or catastrophes (CDCs). Utilizing frame theory, this thesis analyzed whether a relationship existed between the use of strong rhetoric (i.e., CDCs) and action taken to respond to the spills, by establishing what various actors meant when they framed them as CDCs, and by ascertaining how their action-oriented CDC frames correlated with the actual outcomes. This thesis found that the actors meant a great number and variety of things by framing the spills as CDCs, and that only the term disaster had a significant number of correlations with the spills' outcomes. The results help explain why global environmental problems (e.g., climate change), despite being labelled crises, disasters, and catastrophes, are not receiving greater action. --Leaf iii.
