The government and medias main role is to convey urgent issues to the public.

One matter that

should be top priority is the environment problems that are occurring all around the world. If the
public are made aware of the growing problems that threaten our lives on a day to day basis they
might come together in unison and help find solutions to the problem. Japan, unlike other
countries, has devoted much of its time in an effort to spread awareness to the public. Since
global environmental problems have been an issue since the end of the 1980s, UNCED (the
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) held a meeting in brazil in an
effort to find solutions and raise awareness on environmental problems. The media in Japan
heavily broadcasted this conference to the public, and also featured these problems on special
programmes. Their main goal was to influence the attitude and behavior of the public.
Afterwards A mass survey was conducted on the public in Tokyo which measured the intensity
of public awareness in three different aspects: : general concern, relative intensity of the salience
among major issues, and the salience of subissues at the local, national, and global level. At the
beginning of the survey respondents were asked about how much they cared about the
environment. Over 17 percent were very concerned, 28.1 percent were fairly concerned, and 11.5
percent were not concerned. These results helped them figure out that this difference in opinion
didnt lie in gender , it had to do with age groups. Older people were more concerned about
environmental problems than younger people. More importantly, a noteworthy association was
found between the amount of exposure to television and the degree in which the public was
affected. As more people were watching news about environmental issues, more of them
characterized environmental problems as important.


http://gaz.sagepub.com.ezproxy.aub.edu.lb/content/54/3/209.full.pdf+html
in Japan
The media coverage and public awareness of environmental issues