While digital media give us the ability to communicate with and know the world, their use comes at the expense of an immense ecological footprint and environmental degradation. In Finite Media Sean Cubitt offers a large-scale rethinking of theories of mediation by examining the environmental and human toll exacted by mining and the manufacture, use, and disposal of millions of phones, computers, and other devices. The way out is through an eco-political media aesthetics, in which people use media to shift their relationship to the environment and where public goods and spaces are available to all. Cubitt demonstrates this through case studies ranging from the 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang to an image of Saturn taken during NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission, suggesting that affective responses to images may generate a populist environmental politics that demands better ways of living and being. Only by reorienting our use of media, Cubitt contends, can we overcome the failures of political elites and the ravages of capital.
This book examines the role of the media in environmental politics and activism in the 21st century. It highlights how politics is mediated in myriad ways through newspapers and news channels, through mobile telephony and through social networking sites. Further, it shows how the media creates and influences relevant discourses, builds campaigns and awareness, and adopts and discards issues. With a range of perspectives on issues of environmental justice and equity, the volume scrutinizes how the media discourse on environment shapes our politics, and the role of international politics, finance, youth, newspapers, magazines and 24-hour television. Bringing together academics, activists and media persons, this highly topical book will serve as significant reading for researchers and scholars of development studies and media studies, as well as policymakers, NGOs and environmental campaigners.
Environmental protection has not equally established itself as a permanent fixture in the political systems of all countries: to date, governments and entire societies have responded to environmental challenges in a variety of ways, and concrete environmental policy is still a highly national matter. Moreover, the perception of environmental problems varies considerably on a global scale. The reasons normally cited for these differences largely stem from the environmental policy debates themselves, e.g. poverty, ignorance, capital interests, etc. In contrast, this book shows that concrete environmental policy emerges from a complex interplay of mass media and political conflicts: first, the mass media provide the framework for national environmental policy through agenda-setting, framing and scandalization; second, the mass media thereby change values in the political and social discourse, e.g. by altering the perception of global commons and expanding the possibilities of interest articulation; and third, this can lead to political decision-making processes in which legal and other measures for environmental protection are enforced. The book systematically compares industrialized countries such as Germany and Japan with several rapidly emerging countries in South and Southeast Asia.
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.
At every stage, environmental policy is the result of the combat of stakeholders interested in, and affected by, the problem being addressed and the range of possible solutions. The combatants include any or all of the following: the federal government, environmental advocacy groups, and business, the media, the scientific community, think tanks, NGOs of every stripe, trade associations and professional organizations, and even state and local governments, each of whom have their own interests in the resulting policy. Environmental Politics: Interest Groups, the Media, and the Making of Policy discusses political battles over the environment from ground level - as they are fought in legislative chambers, the daily newspaper, on television, and, increasingly, on the Internet. The text explores environmental politics as a clash of interests, not ideologies, and environmental policy as a result of the reconciliation of those interests. The author covers not only the conventional aspects of the policymaking process but more recent and less recognized elements and developments such as: Proliferation of legislative riders and monument designations as major environmental strategies Evolving role of the media, from science popularizer to agenda setter Growing influence on both Congress and the public of conservative and libertarian foundations and think tanks Devolution of environmental power from the Federal to state governments Metamorphosis of EPA in a business-driven regulatory revolution Effect of globalization on US environmental policy Newly emerging role of the precautionary principle in marrying science and politics Increasing role of the Internet in promoting populist issues and promoting the decentralization of the environmental power structure No other book covers the politics of the environment the way this one does. Written by an expert with 25 years of experience in environmental policymaking, Environmental Politics: Interest Groups, the Media, and the Making of Policy gives you an insider's view of how policies are forged. By examining these issues through an interest group lens, this book not only accounts for what policies have been adopted but also shows how you can influence policy and effect change.
Focusing on cultural values and norms as they are translated into politics and policy outcomes, this book presents a unique contribution in combining research from varied disciplines and from both the developed and developing world. This collection draws from multiple perspectives to present an overview of the knowledge related to our current understanding of climate change politics and culture. It is divided into four sections – Culture and Values, Communication and Media, Politics and Policy, and Future Directions in Climate Politics Scholarship – each followed by a commentary from a key expert in the field. The book includes analysis of the challenges and opportunities for establishing successful communication on climate change among scientists, the media, policy-makers, and activists. With an emphasis on the interrelation between social, cultural, and political aspects of climate change communication, this volume should be of interest to students and scholars of climate change, environment studies, environmental policy, communication, cultural studies, media studies, politics, sociology.
Politics is above all a contest, and the news media are the central arena for viewing that competition. One of the central concerns of political communication has to do with the myriad ways in which politics has an impact on the news media and the equally diverse ways in which the media influences politics. Both of these aspects in turn weigh heavily on the effects such political communication has on mass citizens. In Making Sense of Media and Politics, Gadi Wolfsfeld introduces readers to the most important concepts that serve as a framework for examining the interrelationship of media and politics: political power can usually be translated into power over the news media when authorities lose control over the political environment they also lose control over the news there is no such thing as objective journalism (nor can there be) the media are dedicated more than anything else to telling a good story the most important effects of the news media on citizens tend to be unintentional and unnoticed. By identifying these five key principles of political communication, the author examines those who package and send political messages, those who transform political messages into news, and the effect all this has on citizens. The result is a brief, engaging guide to help make sense of the wider world of media and politics and an essential companion to more in-depths studies of the field.
