Media And The Environment

Media and communication processes are central to how we come to know about and make sense of our environment and to the ways in which environmental concerns are generated, elaborated, manipulated and contested. The second edition of Environment, Media and Communication builds on the first edition’s framework for analysing and understanding media and communication roles in the politics of the environment. It draws on the significant and continuing growth and advances in the field of environmental communication research to show the increasing diversification and complexity of environmental communication. The book highlights the persistent urgency of analysing and understanding how communication about the environment is being influenced and manipulated, with implications for how and indeed whether environmental challenges are being addressed and dealt with. Since the first edition, changes in media organisations, news media and environmental journalism have continued apace, but – perhaps more significantly – the media technologies and the media and communications landscape have evolved profoundly with the continued rise of digital and social media. Such changes have gone hand in hand with, and often facilitated, enabled and enhanced shifting balances of power in the politics of the environment. There is thus a greater need than ever to analyse and understand the roles of mediated public communication about the environment, and to ask critical questions about who/what benefits and who/what is adversely affected by such processes. This book will be of interest to students in media/communication studies, geography, environmental studies, political science and sociology as well as to environmental professionals and activists.

Sustainable Media explores the many ways that media and environment are intertwined from the exploitation of natural and human resources during media production to the installation and disposal of media in the landscape; from people’s engagement with environmental issues in film, television, and digital media to the mediating properties of ecologies themselves. Edited by Nicole Starosielski and Janet Walker, the assembled chapters expose how the social and representational practices of media culture are necessarily caught up with technologies, infrastructures, and environments.Through in-depth analyses of media theories, practices, and objects including cell phone towers, ecologically-themed video games, Geiger counters for registering radiation, and sound waves traveling through the ocean, contributors question the sustainability of the media we build, exchange, and inhabit and chart emerging alternatives for media ecologies.

Communication about ‘the environment’ in and through a broad array of news, advertising, art and entertainment media is one of the major sources of public and political understanding of definitions, issues and problems associated with the environment. Environment, Media and Communication examines the social, cultural and political roles of the media as a public arena for images, representations, definitions and controversy regarding the environment. The book starts by discussing and outlining a framework for analyzing media and communication roles in the emergence of the environment and environmental problems as issues for public and political concern. It proceeds to examine who and what drives the public agenda on environmental issues, addressing questions about how governments, scientists, experts, pressure groups and other stakeholders have sought to use traditional as well as newer media for promoting their definitions of the key issues. The media are not merely an open public arena or stage, but rather themselves a key gate-keeper and influence in the process of communicating about the environment: the role of news values, organizational arrangements and professional practices, are thus examined next. Recognizing the importance of wider popular culture narratives to public understanding and communication about the environment and nature, the book proceeds with a discussion of the messages and moral tales communicated about the environment, science and nature in a range of media, including film and advertising media. It shows how this wider context provides important clues to understanding the successes and failures of selected environmental issues or campaigns. The book finishes with an examination of the key approaches and models used for understanding how the media influence and interact with public opinion and political decision-making on environmental issues. Offering a comprehensive introduction to theoretical approaches and models for the study of media and communication roles regarding the environment, and drawing on empirical research evidence and examples from Europe, America, Australia and Asia, the book will be of interest to students in media/communication studies, geography, environmental studies, political science and sociology as wll as to environmental professionals and activists.

Drawing on a range of international examples, Libby Lester invites readers to develop a nuanced understanding of changing media practices and dynamics by connecting local, national and global environmental issues, journalistic practices and news sources, public relations and protests, and the symbolic and strategic circulation of meanings in the public sphere.

This book is intended for final year undergraduates and postgraduates in cultural and media studies, as well as postgraduate and academic researchers. Courses on culture and the media within sociology, environmental studies, human geography and politics.

This book is intended for final year undergraduates and postgraduates in cultural and media studies, as well as postgraduate and academic researchers. Courses on culture and the media within sociology, environmental studies, human geography and politics.

The news media has become a key arena for staging environmental conflicts. Through a range of illuminating examples ranging from climate change to oil spills, Media, Environment and the Network Society provides a timely and far-reaching analysis of the media politics of contemporary environmental debates.

Focusing on the meanings, uses, and impacts of new media in childhood, family life, peer culture, and the relation between home and school, this volume sets out to address many of the questions, fears, and hopes regarding the changing place of media in the lives of today's children and young people. The scholars contributing to this work argue that such questions--intellectual, empirical, and policy-related--can be productively addressed through cross-national research. Hence, this volume brings together researchers from 12 countries--Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland--to present original and comprehensive findings regarding the diffusion and significance of new media and information technologies among children. Inspired by parallels and difference between the arrival of television in the family home during the 1950s and the present day arrival of new media, the research is based on in-depth interviews and a detailed comparative survey of 6- to 16-year-olds across Europe and in Israel. The result is a comprehensive, detailed, and fascinating account of how these technologies are rapidly becoming central to the daily lives of young people. As a resource for researchers and students in media and communication studies, leisure and cultural studies, social psychology, and related areas, this volume provides crucial insights into the role of media in the lives of children. The findings included herein will also be of interest to policymakers in broadcasting, technology, and education throughout the world.