Role of media in environmental awereness

1. ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING

CONCLUSION:

The different sets of studies have share that how the Centre for Science and Environment
through its publication 'Down To Earth' have tried their best to bring complex but
important issues into limelight. The coverage has raised furores among many. Starting
from ministers to bureaucrats to big fundamentalist, everybody is looking forward to the
issues raised by the magazine. The publication has not only susucceded in bringing issues
which were considered non-important in the popular parlance have gained importance
and popularity overnight. Thus we can say with confidence that the magazine has served
its purpose well. One can only hope that more and more publications of this kind must
care forward and spread the awareness regarding environmental issues among a vast
array of concerned citizens. Thus media has performed its part with much interest and
enthusiasm as well as with great precision. Long live the enthusiasm, long live the quest
for excellence.

Conclusion

“If you plan for one year, plan rice, if you plan for ten years plant trees , and if
you plan for hundred years educate people”. So if we want to save our mother earth we
have to make our man king flourish, there is a strong need to conserve our natural
recourses and make judicious use of them. We must think earth as a habitat, not of today
but of distant tomorrow where there will be place and means for every being alive. The
preservation and conservation of environmental heritage is our sacred duty. All of us
living on this planet, whether rich or poor, industrialist or workman, farmers or labourers,
office goers or house wife, VIP or common men, as individuals or groups, are responsible
for the present dismal state of our environment and each one of us has to contribute
towards its rehabilitation, preservation and conservation

Explanation and presentation

1. All media are construction

The media do not present simple reflections of external reality. Rather, they present
carefully crafted constructions that reflect many decisions and result from many
determining factors. Media Literacy works towards deconstructing these constructions,
taking them apart to show how they are made.

2. The media construct reality

The media are responsible for the majority of the observations and experiences from
which we build up our personal understandings of the world and how it works. Much of
our view of reality is based on media messages that have been pre-constructed and have
attitudes, interpretations and conclusions already built in. The media, to a great extent,
give us our sense of reality.

3. Audiences negotiate meaning in the media

The media provide us with much of the material upon which we build our picture of
reality, and we all "negotiate" meaning according to individual factors: personal needs
and anxieties, the pleasures or troubles of the day, racial and sexual attitudes, family and
cultural background, and so forth.

4. Media have commercial implications

Media Literacy aims to encourage an awareness of how the media are influenced by
commercial considerations, and how these affect content, technique and distribution.
Most media production is a business, and must therefore make a profit. Questions of
ownership and control are central: a relatively small number of individuals control what
we watch, read and hear in the media.

5. Media contain ideological and value messages

All media products are advertising, in some sense, in that they proclaim values and ways
of life. Explicitly or implicitly, the mainstream media convey ideological messages about
such issues as the nature of the good life, the virtue of consumerism, the role of women,
the acceptance of authority, and unquestioning patriotism.

6. Media have social and political implications

The media have great influence on politics and on forming social change. Television can
greatly influence the election of a national leader on the basis of image. The media
involve us in concerns such as civil rights issues, famines in Africa, and the AIDS
epidemic. They give us an intimate sense of national issues and global concerns, so that
we become citizens of Marshall McLuhan's "Global Village."

7. Form and content are closely related in the media

As Marshall McLuhan noted, each medium has its own grammar and codifies reality in
its own particular way. Different media will report the same event, but create different
impressions and messages.

8. Each medium has a unique aesthetic form

Just as we notice the pleasing rhythms of certain pieces of poetry or prose, so we ought to
be able to enjoy the pleasing forms and effects of the different media.

Environmental awareness creation

Environmental education must be encouraged where at first student become aware

of environment. Then, they recognize or review the relationship between humans and
nature. The students get knowledge and skills from the teachers to solve the
environmental problems. The teachers motivate to develop the students attitudes to
participated various environmental protection programs in favor of environment. The
teacher and parents try to inculcate the knowledge about environment and develop
positive and healthy attitude towards environment from the beginning of life. There is
essential need to organize and conduct educational programmes focus on environmental
issues, problems, attitude, towards preservation and conservation of environment.

Environmental Conservation

Conservation has been misunderstood by many as a moratorium on progress. This

is in fact not true. Only sustainable development is permanent remedy to droughts,
famines and the dwindling bio – diversity on this earth. Conservation implies an attitude
and understanding that involve active management of the things(s) to be conserved. Four
decades back, the words such as conservation and environment were little know. But to
day one can find conservation messages in every newspapers, out side cutboard and
books.

Sustainable Development

Environment belongs to each one of us and all of we have a responsibility to

contribute towards its conservation and protection. When we take development, we
should keep in mind two basic characteristic of development: (i) It should be sustained
the benefits that were getting now from it should be assured to future generation.(ii) It
should ethical. What ever the benefit a person or species should not harm other
individuals or species.

The objective of development should not only be to raise the economic standard
but also raise the social, economic, ethical and spiritual level of the people. Today,
sustainable development has become a buzzword two key aspects for sustainable
development are inter – generation equity and emphasizes that we hand over a life
healthy and resources fil environment to our future generations.

Community participation

The education institutes conduct the various programmes to making awareness of

environment protection among all people in the society. They can arrange social service
camps and community service camps for environment preservation that will be led by
the teachers and students for the benefit of society. For example. Clean village, Clean
city, Dustless city, Awareness camps and Healthcare camps etc., Especially the students
are coming from NSS,JRC,NCC, to take responsibility for creating awareness and
conservation of the environment among the public.

Goals of Environment Education

To improve the quality of environment To create an environment among people on

environmental protection To develop the capability of decision making

Knowledge and Educational needs in rural community

The main aim of the environmental education is to make people in the society to
be aware , knowledgeable and in inculcate positive attitudes towards protection of
environment and make them skilled to solve environmental problems so as to enable
them to participate in the activities undertaken for the protection of environment the rural
people have to learn about the environmental concern so that they are enable to protect
the environment because we not been gifted the environment our ancestors and also we
have not borrowed it from our off spring . Instead we have to handover the environment
to the posterity both in terms quality and quantity.

Role of NGO’s in environmental activities

The environmental NGO’s have played a major role in environmental protection

and development by linking the local with the global. The collaborative work of these
NGO’s lead to fulfillment of local needs. Some of the NGO’s are working for
environmental awareness while some are working in research field . The complementary
work of the NGO’s deals more specifically with how the NGO community impacts issues
of the environment

suggestion
Measures for Development

v Emphasis on “Decentralized Industries”

v Encouragement for “Tree forming”

v Declaration of water as the main product of forests

v Preservation and management of forests

v Conservation of ‘mono-culture stands into mixed forests”

v “Designing with nature” by using appropriate technology

v By using “3R’s approach viz, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”

v Prompting “Environment Education and awareness”

v Resource utilization as per “carrying capacity”

v Making environmental Education value based

v Developing a life style in “Harmony with nature”

Even as an individual there is something that you can do no matter how small or
insignificant it may seem. Planting trees, proper waste disposal or buying naturally
formulated or green products is a good start. These small steps can be the start of a great
importance of awareness in environment, so make sure that you be the first or among the
many individuals that are taking care of the environment in anyway possible.

Methodology

To understand the effect of environmental awareness on the U.S. travel industry,

PhoCusWright conducted comprehensive research on three core components of the
marketplace—consumers, suppliers and influencers (distribution intermediaries and
media).

Consumers
PhoCusWright fielded an online consumer survey August 8 through September 12, 2008
through Global Market Insight, Inc. targeting the general U.S. online traveler population.
Survey participation required respondents to have taken at least one leisure trip involving
an overnight stay in paid accommodations at least 75 miles from home the past year.
1334 qualified responses were received and the respondent pool can be projected with
confidence to the U.S. adult population of online travelers (as defined above). The error
interval for analysis of groups within the respondent population is +/–2.7% at the 95%
confidence level.

In addition to the general U.S. online traveler population, the consumer survey was also
fielded to research partner Sustainable Travel International’s (STI) consumer database.
18 qualified responses were received from STI’s list. Due to the source of these
participants, their responses were only included in the sample set for certain questions.

Suppliers and Influencers

In addition to a total of 40 executive interviews, PhoCusWright, Sustainable Travel
International, and HSMAI Foundation fielded a qualitative survey to industry members
from August 14 to September 26, 2008. Collectively, 134 qualified responses were
received.
Mass media and advertising

Because mainstream media is privately owned their end goal is of course to make money
from their business. And like one can imagine advertising is one of the main income
sources. This means that the media have to comply with and cater to their advertisers
wishes so they don’t lose their income source. And those who can afford to advertise are
the transnational corporations who all share and push the free-market capitalistic
ideology. Campbell writes that these large corporate advertisers rarely want to sponsor
shows or programs that involves any kind of serious environmental, social or political
criticism towards any corporate activities.
Product-placement in the media, for example when Pepsi pays to have their soda drink
visible in a TV-show, is a multi-billion-dollar industry these days. And to be able to
influence the public, i.e. their consumers, corporations spend more than half as much per
capita on advertising than what is spent on education around the world. With the help of
advertising corporations can construct needs and desires among the public for their
various products. The ideology which is spread with the help from the mainstream media
and the advertising industry encourages mass consumption on an unquestioned level and
promotes consumption as happiness.

Media literacy is a repertoire of competences that enable people to analyse, evaluate and
create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms. Education for
media literacy often uses an inquiry-based pedagogic model that encourages people to
ask questions about what they watch, hear, and read. Media literacy education provides
tools to help people critically analyze messages, offers opportunities for learners to
broaden their experience of media, and helps them develop creative skills in making their
own media messages. [1] Critical analysis can include identifying author, purpose and
point of view, examining construction techniques and genres, examining patterns of
media representation, and detecting propaganda, censorship, and bias in news and public
affairs programming (and the reasons for these). Media literacy education may explore
how structural features—such as media ownership, or its funding model[2] -- affect the
information presented. Media literate people should be skillful creators and producers of
media messages, both to facilitate understanding of the specific qualities of each medium,
as well as to create independent media and participate as active citizens. Media literacy
can be seen as contributing to an expanded conceptualization of literacy, treating mass
media, popular culture and digital media as new types of 'texts' that require analysis and
evaluation. By transforming the process of media consumption into an active and critical
process, people gain greater awareness of the potential for misrepresentation and
manipulation (especially through commercials and public relations techniques), and
understand the role of mass media and participatory media in constructing views of
reality.[3] Media literacy education is sometimes conceptualized as a way to address the
negative dimensions of mass media, popular culture and digital media, including media
violence, gender and racial stereotypes, the sexualization of children, and concerns about
loss of privacy, cyberbullying and Internet predators. By building knowledge and
competencies in using media and technology, media literacy education may provide a
type of protection to children and young by helping them make good choices in their
media consumption habits and patterns of usage.[4]

methodology
Media available:

1. Newspapers
2. Magazines
3. Yellow pages
4. Radio
5. Television

Media is playing an important role in the systems of present life. People want to remain
informed about everything and news, which is taking place anywhere in the world. The
world has become a global village and this is because of media only. Now people living
in different countries know everything about the people of other countries sitting at home
with the help of media. Education has become very easy and understandable with the
help of audio and video media because children understand things through them quite
easily. The main advantage of media is current information, which is available round the
clock and people remain informed about important news through radio, television and
other sources. So we can say the role of media is very important in our life.

IV. The mass media

The mass media played a tremendous role in focusing national attention on the problems
of pollution and in creating an enlightened public opinion. But the mass media in Japan
are supported by private capital and industrial wealth, or otherwise are under government
control in terms of the licensing of broadcast systems and manipulative interference in
journalists' organizations. In this situation the maintenance of journalistic integrity is very
difficult indeed. In spite of this, individual journalists were able to provide relatively
unbiased reports on the problems of environmental destruction, while citizens'
movements made every effort to bring journalists into their activities. People thought that
the problems of pollution were only local issues, but in fact each problem had a
counterpart in several other areas of the country. Under the influence of the media, the
anti-pollution movements were supported by the public and efforts became national in
scope. The government and industrial circles are fully aware of the power of the mass
media and as a result there were various pressures exerted to circumscribe freedom of
speech and expression. But in spite of these efforts to suppress the truth, the facts became
generally known. Even before the beginning of the Second World War, when freedom of
expression was strictly limited, journalists played a very important role in focusing public
attention on the Ashio copper-mine problem. In the post-war period up to the 1960s, the
mass media were not able to give full and continued attention to problems of the human
environment. But in the late 1960s citizens' movements became more fully aware of the
power of the media, and were able to make use of it through various forms of co-
operation.

Determined not to rely totally on mass media outlets, the pollution victims and their
supporters created their own unique methods of informing the public, and were able to
make themselves heard nationwide. In the case of the Minamata disease, individual
journalists made anonymous connections with victims' networks. The cost of maintaining
a private non-profit news system is not small, but news about the Minamata disease
situation had continued to be provided periodically; this activity is a form of moral
support for the victims of the disease, as well as for the related support movements. There
are also other support organizations besides those generated by the Minamata situation,
and these groups form networks of communication for mutual support and information.

The most underdeveloped aspect of the communication media is related to the problem of
international communication. Since Japan is an island nation, the problems of linguistic
and cultural isolation are both great and inevitable. As a result, attempts to share the
experiences of Japan in the environmental arena with other nations and peoples are out of
proportion to the magnitude of Japan's environmental destruction. Japanese
understanding of international environmental issues is also extremely limited. A good
example of this is the media distortions generated in relation to the worldwide anti-
whaling movement. The Japanese media tend to divide news artificially into domestic
and international segments. This reflects the geographical and historical isolation that
Japan continues to foster, as well as a slightly masked but significant degree of nascent
nationalism in news reporting. However, with the increased internationalization of
Japan's economy, as well as its sheer size, it is essential that anti-pollution movements
become more effective in communicating on an international level. In order that Japan
may avoid the pitfalls of self-righteousness, it is urgent that anti-pollution movements co-
operate with their counterparts in other countries so as to strengthen fellowship and
interaction on a worldwide scale.