Global media

This unit described the emerging field of environmental communication, its major areas of study, and the principal concepts around which the chapters of this book will be organized:

• The field of environmental communication consists of several major areas of study, including: environmental rhetoric and the social–symbolic “construc-tion” of nature, public participation in environmental decision making, envi-ronmental collaboration and conflict resolution, media and environmental journalism, representations of nature in corporate advertising and popular culture, advocacy campaigns and message construction, and science and risk communication.

• The term environmental communication itself was defined as the pragmatic and constitutive vehicle for our understanding of the environment as well as our relationships to the natural world; it is the symbolic medium that we use in constructing environmental problems and in negotiating society’s different responses to them.

• Using this definition, the framework for the chapters in this book builds on three core principles:

(1) Human communication is a form of symbolic action.

(2) Our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors relating to nature and environmental problems are mediated or influenced by communication.

(3) The public sphere emerges as a discursive space for communication about the environment.

Now that you have learned something about environmental communication and its practices, I hope you’ll feel inspired to join the public conversations about the environment that are already in progress. Along the way, I hope you’ll discover your own voice in speaking on behalf of the natural world and your own communities.

UNIT – 5

RELEVANCE OF ECO-EDUCATION

Rethinking of Eco-education through media

Impact of Environment on Human development.

Human behavior and Environmental Education through media

Environmental communication refers to the study and practice of how individuals, institutions, societies, and cultures craft, distribute, receive, understand, and use messages about the environment and human interactions with the environment. This includes a wide range of possible interactions, from interpersonal communication to virtual communities, participatory decision making, and environmental media coverage.

From the perspective of practice, Alexander Flor defines environmental communication as the application of communication approaches, principles, strategies and techniques to environmental management and protection.

As an academic field, environmental communication emerged from interdisciplinary work involving communication,environmental studies, environmental science, risk analysis and management, sociology, and political ecology.

Flor (2004) considers it as a significant element in the environmental sciences, which he believes to be a transdicipline. He begins his textbook on environmental communication with a declarative statement, "Environmentalism as we know it today began with environmental communication. The environmental movement was ignited by a spark from a writer’s pen, or more specifically and accurately, Rachel Carson’s typewriter." According to Flor, environmental communication has six essentials: knowledge of ecological laws; sensitivity to the cultural dimension; ability to network effectively; efficiency in using media for social agenda setting; appreciation and practice of environmental ethics; and conflict resolution, mediation and arbitration (Ibid). In an earlier book, Flor and Gomez (1993) explore the development of an environmental communication curriculum from the perspectives of practitioners from the government, the private sector and the academe

Climate change communications has historically focused on news coverage and disseminating information. Academic fields such as psychology, environmental sociology, and risk communication have argued that public nonresponse to climate change is due to a lack of information. In her book Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life,Norgaard's (2011) study of Bygdaby (a fictional name used for a real city in Norway) found that non-response was much more complex than just a lack of information. In fact, too much information can do the exact opposite because people tend to neglect global warming once they realize there is no easy solution. When people understand the complexity of the issue, they can feel overwhelmed and helpless which can lead to or skepticism. Environmental skepticism is an increasing challenge for environmental rhetoric

Symbolic action

Environmental communication is also a type of symbolic action that serves two functions. Those functions are pragmaticand constitutive. Environmental communication is pragmatic because it helps individuals and organizations to accomplish goals and literally do things through communication. Examples of this include educating, alerting, persuading and collaborating. Environmental communication is constitutive because it helps to shape people's understandings of environmental issues, themselves, and Nature; it shapes the meanings we hold of these things. Examples of this include values, attitudes, and ideologies vis-à-vis Nature and environmental issues and problems

Communication Theory has one universal law, written by S. F. Scudder in the early 1900s, and later published in 1980. The Universal Communication Law states that, "All living entities, beings and creatures communicateIn an unpublished interview, Scudder clarified the concept - "All of the living communicate through movements, sounds, reactions, physical changes, gestures, languages, breath, color transformations, etc. Communication is a means of survival, existence and being and does not need another to acknowledge its presence. Examples - the cry of a child (communication that it is hungry, hurt, cold, etc.); the browning of a leaf (communication that it is dehydrated, thirsty per se, dying); the cry of an animal (communicating that it is injured, hungry, angry, etc.). Everything living communicates

Scudder's thesis is aptly reinforced by General Systems Theory, which submits that one of the three critical functions of living systems is the exchange of information with its environment and with other living systems (the other two being the exchange of materials and the exchange of energy). In his book, Flor (2004, page 4) extends this argument by forwarding that, "All living systems, from the simplest to the most complex, are equipped to perform these critical functions. They are called critical because they are necessary for the survival of the living system. Communication is nothing more than the exchange of information. Hence, at its broadest sense, environmental communication is necessary for the survival of every living system, be it an organism, an ecosystem, or (even) a social system."

Environmental communication is all of the forms of communication that are engaged with the social debate about environmental issues and problems.

Also within the scope of environmental communication are the genres of nature writing, science writing, environmental literature, environmental interpretation and environmental advocacy. While there is a great deal of overlap among the various genres within environmental communication, they are each deserving of their own definition.

Environment plays an important role in human life. Psychologically a person's environment consists of the sum total of the stimulations (physical & Psychological) which he receives from his conception. There are different types of environment such as physical, environment, social environment & psychological environment.

Physical environment consists of all outer physical surroundings both in-animate and animate which have to be manipulated in order to provide food, clothing and shelter. Geographical conditions i.e. weather and climates are physical environment which has considerable impact on individual child.

Social environment is constituted by the society-individuals and institutions, social laws, customs by which human behavior is regulated.

Psychological environment is rooted in individual's reaction with an object. One's love, affection and fellow feeling attitude will strengthen human bond with one another.

So Growth and Development are regulated by the environment of an individual where he lives.

Nature writing is the genre with the longest history in environmental communication. In his book, This Incomparable Land: A Guide to American Nature Writing, Thomas J. Lyon attempts to use a “taxonomy of nature writing” in order to define the genre. He suggests that his classifications, too, suffer a great deal of overlap and intergrading. “The literature of nature has three main dimensions to it: natural history information, personal responses to nature, and philosophical interpretation of nature” (Lyon 20). In the natural history essay, “the main burden of the writing is to convey pointed instruction in the facts of nature,” such as with the ramble-type nature writing of John Burroughs (Lyon 21). “In essays of experience, the author’s firsthand contact with nature is the frame for the writing,” as with Edward Abbey’s contemplation of a desert sunset (Lyon 23). In the philosophical interpretation of nature, the content is similar to that of the natural history and personal experience essays, “but the mode of presentation tends to be more abstract and scholarly” (Lyon 25). The Norton Book of Nature Writing adds a few new dimensions to the genre of nature writing, including animal narratives, garden essays, farming essays, ecofeminist works, writing on environmental justice, and works advocating environmental preservation, sustainability and biological diversity. Environmental journalism pulls from the tradition and scope of nature writing.

Environmental interpretation is a particular format for the communication of relevant information. It “involves translating the technical language of a natural science or related field into terms and ideas that people who aren’t scientists can readily understand. And it involves doing it in a way that’s entertaining and interesting to these people” (Ham 3). Environmental interpretation is pleasurable (to engage an audience in the topic and inspire them to learn more about it), relevant (meaningful and personal to the audience so that they have an intrinsic reason to learn more about the topic), organized (easy to follow and structured so that main points are likely to be remembered) and thematic (the information is related to a specific, repetitious message) (Ham 8–28). While environmental journalism is not derived from environmental interpretation, it can employ interpretive techniques to explain difficult concepts to its audience.

Environmental literature is writing that comments intelligently on environmental themes, particularly as applied to the relationships between man, society and the environment. Most nature writing and some science writing falls within the scope of environmental literature. Often, environmental literature is understood to espouse care and concern for the environment, thus advocating a more thoughtful and ecologically sensitive relationship of man to nature. Environmental journalism is partially derived from environmental literature

But have we ever realised that all the celebrities as well as the politicians are under the aegis of these underworld dons? They are mere puppets in the hands of these dons; the media has tried its best to expose these dons by discovering recorded tapes and other incriminating evidence which expose the connection between the underworld and the various Bollywood bigwigs.

Both in India and the United States, scandals related to abuse of information are the headlines.In India, the Amar Singh wiretapping case is the big news, having replaced the Parliament bribery scandal, which, in turn, came at the heels of the oil-for-food scam exposed by Paul Volcker.

have decried this decision on procedural grounds; others see a conspiracy behind the sting, calling it an 'anti-Adivasi conspiracy'; others bemoan that bigger fish has 'gone scot-free'. Some say the conduct of the expelled MPs was more a reflection of their stupidity at having been caught, given the level of corruption that pervades the system. Although the acceptance of money for asking questions is unconscionable, the MPs were clearly naïve about the ways of Delhi. If they had only asked for contributions to their election fund before granting access, there may not have been any impropriety in the transactions. Is it that new MPs are not given orientation classes in ethics and 'rules of the game' when they arrive in Delhi?

Given that the ten MPs named in 1996 by the CBI for taking money to vote in favour of the P V Narasimha Rao government have still not been punished by the courts or Parliament, the belief must have been that it was all right to accept money for questions. According to the Lok Sabha Rule Book, 'Voicing the constituents' concerns on the floor of the House is the primary parliamentary duty of an elected representative.' This is different from Western democracies where the primary duty is to enact laws, and the question of implementation is left to the executive and the courts.

• 
  societies organise and change
  

• 
  as a result how does mass communication changes
  

• 
  as a result language also changes
  

Political economy

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  control over production and distribution of ideas is concentrates in the hands of the capitalist owners of means of production;
  

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  as a result, their views … receive constant publicity and come to dominate the thinking of subordinate groups;
  

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  this ideological domination plays a key role in maintaining class inequalities/
  

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  the relationship between ownership and control;
  

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  the process though which dominant ideology is translated into cultural commodities;
  

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  the dynamics of reception and the extent of adoption of dominant ideas. Murdock, G. and Golding, P. (1978) Culture, communications and political economy in Curran, J., et al (eds) Mass Communication and society, Open University Press
  

(The political economy) sets out to show how the different ways of financing and organising cultural production have traceable consequence for the range of discourses and representation in the public domain and for audiences' access to them.

(It is) materialist, in its focus on the interaction of people with their material environment and its further preoccupation with the unequal command over material resources and the consequences of such inequality for the nature of the symbolic environment.

A focal question for the political economy of communications is to investigate how changes in the array of forces which exercise control over production and distribution limit or liberate the public sphere.

Political economy is concerned to explain how the cultural dynamics of production structure public discourse by promoting certain cultural forms over others.

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  the need to understand social change and historical transformation
  

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  be firmly rooted in an analysis of the wider social reality
  

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  moral philosophy - refers to the social values and to conceptions of appropriate social practices …to make explicit the moral position…
  

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  praxis - refers to human activity and specifically to the free and creative activity by which people produce and change the world and themselves.
  

Mosco, V. (1996) The political economy of communication London: Sage

The main attempt of this approach is to trace in detail how the central dynamism of capitalism, and the shifting balance between markets and public, shape the making and taking of meaning.

Strengths

1. 
   An understanding of power - the relation between economic power, political power and the media.
   

2. 
   Study of mass media as an economic system that dictate and determines relation between organisation and work / workers.
   

3. 
   Highlights economics of production - profitability, revenue, advertisement.
   

4. 
   Reminds us we exist in capitalist society.
   

- diversity - range of issues class, gender, ethnicity

1. 
   Difficlut to find evidence.
   

2. 
   Assumes subordinate groups are making meaning exactly according to analysis.
   

3. 
   Unable to study of media content.