Environmental Communication Research Articles

국내 환경커뮤니케이션(Environmental Communication) 연구 현황과 과제

국내 환경커뮤니케이션(Environmental Communication) 연구 현황과 과제

PERAN MASYARAKAT SEBAGAI KOMUNIKATOR PEMBANGUNAN PEDULI LINGKUNGAN

<p>Tujuan penelitian ini untuk mendeskripsikan peran masyarakat sebagai komunikator pembangunan peduli lingkungan. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan secara kualitatif, berlokasi di Kelurahan Tanjung Gusta, Kecamatan Medan Helvetia, Medan. Informan dalam penelitian ini adalah ketua badan keswadayaan masyarakat (BKM) Kelurahan Tanjung Gusta Kecamatan Medan Helvetia. Teknik Pengambilan data melalui wawancara, observasi dan dokumentasi. Teknik analisis data menggunakan model Miles dan Huberman. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa dengan pendekatan secara <em>buttom up</em>, peran masyarakat dalam proses pembangunan dapat dimaksimalkan, melihat beberapa kelebihan komunikator pembangunan yang berasal dari masyarakat setempat lebih banyak dibanding komunikator yang berasal dari luar masyarakat setempat, maka salah satu cara yang paling efektif untuk membangun kesadaran akan peduli lingkungan adalah dengan memaksimalkan peran masyarakat setempat sebagai komunikator pembangunan, Namun, meskipun demikian masih ditemukan beberapa hambatan dalam proses menyampaikan pesan-pesan pembangunan peduli lingkungan yakni hambatan komunikasi dan hambatan sosial (kategori sosial, pertukaran sosial dan hubungan sosial).</p>

Themes Across New Directions in Community Engagement.

The articles in this special issue on New Directions in Environmental Communication in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health present new research and perspectives on engaging communities impacted by Superfund sites—the hazardous waste sites that have been identified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as needing cleanup. In particular, these articles focus on the community engagement cores (CECs) that work with affected communities as part the Superfund Research Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). The purpose of this closing article is to highlight important themes evident across the eight articles in the special issue. When considered together, the findings reveal important lessons learned about community engagement and environmental communication, but also reveal that much more remains to be known. Recommendations are made for how these teams can continue to practice, reflect on, and research community engagement in ways that build toward a better understanding and implementation of best practices.

Persuasion Game: Cross Cultural Comparison

Background. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of the “persuasion game” in changing environmental attitudes and behaviors in different cultural contexts. Personal communication has been identified as a key facilitator of environmental behaviors, but environmental communication in our daily lives is infrequent. Intervention. This study tested the effects of the persuasion game in Germany, Hong Kong, and Japan. The game divides participants into two groups: persuaders and persuadees. The persuaders were given 10 minutes to persuade as many persuadees as they could to adopt energy-saving behaviors. Further, after 10 minutes, these participants were asked to switch their roles. Method. The study employed a quasi-experimental pretest/posttest design to examine changes in attitudes and behavioral intentions of the participants toward energy-saving before and after their participation in the persuasion game. Participants were university students in Germany (N = 116), Hong Kong (N = 65), and Japan (N = 92). Results. In all three countries, playing the game was associated with increased intention to adopt energy-saving behaviors, perceived seriousness of environmental problems, descriptive norm, and subjective norm. The increase in subjective norm was especially high in Japan, where the increase in intention to adopt energy-saving behavior was particularly pronounced among those who had less environmental communication. Discussion. The results indicate that this game can not only facilitate communication on environmental issues in different cultural contexts but also change how people perceive others’ interest in environmental issues. Conclusion. This study showed that persuasion game can be played in countries other than Japan as well. Moreover, it provides an opportunity to communicate with others on environmental issues, which may contribute to promoting future environmental behaviors.

KOMUNIKASI LINGKUNGAN MASYARAKAT SUNGAI TABUK DALAM MENJAGA KEBERSIHAN SUNGAI

Environmental problems especially in the martapura riverbank not only solved with a effort to save the disaster only. Society awareness evenly requires seriousness by means of certain communication patterns. This study uses a qualitative approach with descriptive type. The study was conducted in Sungai Tabuk, Banjar. Based on the results of environmental communication research at the Martapura river community in Sungai Tabuk Sub-district to create a clean environment, judging by the elements of communication, the environmental communication has fulfilled all of these elements. Communication techniques used all communication techniques, namely informative, coercive, persuasive and human relationships.

(Re)storying Sustainability: The Use of Story Cubes in Narrative Inquiries to Understand Individual Perceptions of Sustainability

Narratives represent storied ways of knowing and communicating. Therefore, storytelling, framing and narrative analyses have always been a key feature in media and communication research. In this paper, an innovative approach to narrative inquiries is introduced to capture reflections on individual experiences of sustainability over time. Storytelling is perceived as an act of problematization and, at the same time, as method of analysis. Using Rory’s Story Cubes® (dices with pictograms), we stimulated 35 interviewees from various cultural backgrounds (Asian, European, Anglo-American) to story life events that they relate to sustainability and put it into order and meaning. Our analysis and evaluation of the interviews focused on the story as a whole, which was then linked to the individual biographical background to understand motives and the moral frame(work) for problematizing (un)sustainable behavior. In particular, we focus on problematization as core process of storytelling and complement existing approaches coming from actor-network theory and Foucault’s discourse analysis with Entman’s concept of framing. In this paper, this innovative form of a narrative inquiry is put up for discussion for environmental communication research in order to create a better understanding of individual perceptions of sustainability and sustainability related issues.

Sustainable tourism in sport with emphasis on spectators' contribution in environmental preservation

Purpose: examination the sustainable tourism in sport with emphasis on spectators' contribution in environmental preservation.
 Material and methods. The population of the study consisted of all sports spectators of 27th Fajr Open and Esteghlal vs Tractor rematch from 15th Persian Gulf Pro League. According to Kukran formula sample size was equal to 722 persons. 920 questionnaires distributed among population that 722questionnaires were analyzed .In order to collect data a self-made questionnaire was used which it's validity confirmed by 5 sports teachers of Razi and Tehran university and variables reliability was calculated by using Cronbach's alpha coefficient which was equal to 0.89. Data analysis done by using the descriptive and inferential statistics include Kolmogorov–Smirnov, Pearson correlation, path analysis of structural equations, Regression and also AMOS-21 and SPSS-22. The results showed that environmental communication should be formed within the right framework, encourage people to Environmentally Responsible Behavior through a bonus is not necessarily effective and doesn't encourage sports spectator.
 Results. Result showed that spectators display more cooperation through targeting for enjoyment and are sensitive toward any perceived cost in the implementation of Environmentally Responsible Behavior. The result also showed if cooperation with Environmental Management System doesn't take too much time and totally doesn't interfere with their enjoyment of watching match, they will support it automatically. The results also suggest the need to design efficient equipment to ensure ease of use and as a result reducing the perceived cost associated with Environmentally Responsible Behavior.
 Conclusion. Sports event owners can encourage spectators to do the Environmentally Responsible Behavior by connecting with them and also induce this fact to spectators that associate with the event can assist them to experience higher quality events in the future.

Bees, Extinction and Ambient Soundscapes: An Exploratory Environmental Communication Workshop

As a response to the challenges that visual communication, popularly used in environmental communications, poses for more embodied engagements with climate change, this article focuses upon the neglected role of sound within environmental and climate communication scholarship. Focusing upon the decline of bees as a meaningful topic for the exploration of climate change, this article draws on research conducted with participants of a soundscape workshop to investigate the potential benefits and limitations of using sound-based activities to communicate about a specific climate change topic. This article demonstrates that modes of communicating climate change that encourage people to participate in imaginative, creative and future-based thinking can provide an effective way to engage audiences with the topic of climate change, thus encouraging greater individual and collective action.

Optimization of child-friendly green open space for Brebes’ positioning as a child-friendly regency

The Provision of Green Open Spaces (GOS) as a playground for children as well as introducing environmental awareness is a concern in various regions. GOS is a facility from the local government to fulfil children’s rights in terms of growing and developing in a healthy and safe environment, especially for Brebes, which has declared themselves to be a Child-Friendly Region. Nevertheless, currently, Brebes only has 12 GOSs, which is around 15 per cent of its total area. It hampered by the contradictions between the standard requirements for GOS development and the alteration of land functions due to urbanisation in addition to the lack of community involvement in spatial planning between 2012 and 2017. The purpose of this study is to examine the optimisation of GOS in Brebes Regency from the perspective of environmental communication towards the positioning of Brebes as a child-friendly city; this research is a qualitative descriptive study using ethnographic methods and an environmental communication approach. The qualitative data obtained through in-depth interviews, observations and the documentation of eight informants. The findings show that GOS Brebes currently functions as a media for child development. There are some obstacles in terms of optimising the spaces in Brebes because there are some behaviours that are not child-friendly and/or environmentally friendly. Furthermore, the GOS conditions in Brebes generally fulfil the principles of Child-Friendly Spaces (CFS) as the indicators of the optimal performance of GOS. In addition, communication, resources, disposition and bureaucratic structure are important factors in terms of optimising child-friendly GOS in Brebes. Finally, cooperation between the government and the community members to create an ideal child-friendly GOS should be supported by clear regulations and policies, as well as communicated through the media appropriately and sustainably.

Comparative metatranscriptomic profiling and microRNA sequencing to reveal active metabolic pathways associated with a dinoflagellate bloom

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) have increased as a result of global climate and environmental changes, exerting increasing impacts on the aquatic ecosystem, coastal economy, and human health. Despite great research efforts, our understanding on the drivers of HABs is still limited in part because HAB species' physiology is difficult to probe in situ. Here, we used molecular ecological analyses to characterize a dinoflagellate bloom at Xiamen Harbor, China. Prorocentrum donghaiense was identified as the culprit, which nutrient bioassays showed were not nutrient-limited. Metatranscriptome profiling revealed that P. donghaiense highly expressed genes related to N- and P-nutrient uptake, phagotrophy, energy metabolism (photosynthesis, oxidative phophorylation, and rhodopsin) and carbohydrate metabolism (glycolysis/gluconeogenesis, TCA cycle and pentose phosphate) during the bloom. Many genes in P. donghaiense were up-regulated at night, including phagotrophy and environmental communication genes, and showed active expression in mitosis. Eight microbial defense genes were up-regulated in the bloom compared with previously analyzed laboratory cultures. Furthermore, 76 P. donghaiense microRNA were identified from the bloom, and their target genes exhibited marked differences in amino acid metabolism between the bloom and cultures and the potential of up-regulated antibiotic and cell communication capabilities. These findings, consistent with and complementary to recent reports, reveal major metabolic processes in P. donghaiense potentially important for bloom formation and provide a gene repertoire for developing bloom markers in future research.

Communicating Arsenic's Risks.

Arsenic is a naturally occurring toxic metalloid that has many human health implications. Its strong prevalence in the bedrock and thus much of the well water in New England puts many private well owners at risk. It is also found in food products, particularly those that contain rice. Despite the documented health risks, arsenic is not high on the list of concerns for residents of the region. This study will describe two types of environmental communication efforts that have been undertaken by the Dartmouth Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program (DTMSRP)—the development and evaluation of a comprehensive website, Arsenic and You, and a mental models research approach to better understand the disconnect between expert and community perceptions of arsenic risk. We find that there are knowledge gaps between the two, particularly regarding the origin of arsenic in drinking water and food, the necessity of testing well water, and the process for treating water that is above recommended limits. Moreover, the mental models approach provides a structured framework for better understanding these gaps. A website can address some of these disconnects, and it is important to have a “one-stop shop” for vetted information on the risks and steps to reduce exposure.

Architectural Advocacy: The Bullitt Center and Environmental Design

ABSTRACTIn order to better understand the intersections of environmental communication, advocacy and materiality, this project analyzes how Seattle’s Bullitt Center embodies and enacts messages that offer arguments in favor of changing attitudes and behaviors through its spatial and material design. Through a rhetorical analysis of the building’s design, media coverage of the site, and interviews with the designers, the author offers a case study that illuminates the importance of architecture and materiality in environmental discourse. By encouraging behavior-change in tenants, shaping industry practices and standards, persuading manufacturers to reformulate products, and challenging existing municipal policies, the building reacts to the environment, humans and policies in ways that underscore its agentic capacity and its durability as a material environmental argument. Ultimately the Bullitt Center modifies our understanding of the persuasive power of architecture and the role of advocacy in campaigns for sustainability.

Greenwashing and environmental communication: Effects on stakeholders' perceptions

AbstractSince the first Earth Day in the 1970s, corporate environmental performance has increased dramatically, and cases of greenwashing have increased sharply. The term greenwash refers to a variety of different misleading communications that aim to form overly positive beliefs among stakeholders about a company's environmental practices. The growing number of corporate social responsibility claims, whether founded or not, creates difficulties for stakeholders in distinguishing between truly positive business performance and companies that only appear to embrace a model of sustainable development. In this context, through the lens of legitimacy and signalling theory, we intend to understand and assess the different influences that various types of misleading communications about environmental issues have on stakeholders' perceptions of corporate environmental responsibility and greenwashing. Stakeholder responses to an environmental scandal will also be assessed. The hypotheses tested through a four‐for‐two design experiment reveal that different levels of greenwashing have a significantly different influence on stakeholders' perceptions of corporate environmental responsibility and stakeholders' reactions to environmental scandals.

Transforming wood energy in Sweden and Chile

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse and problematize the relations between international forestry companies and wood energy in the context of climate change in Chile and Sweden. Design/methodology/approach Based on interviews, field observations and analysis of documents, case studies of international forestry companies and wood energy in local areas of Chile and Sweden are examined comparatively. A conceptual framework combining political ecology and environmental communication is developed to approach the cases. Findings The paper finds that the two international forestry companies studied here have widely incorporated the use of wood energy as a renewable and carbon neutral energy strategy for their forestry business. Second, the paper finds that wood energy is used as a way to reproduce forestry development in the two countries, which is contested by NGOs and activists which are today articulating critical approaches to forestry development in the two countries. Third, related to the former finding, the paper finds that the incorporation of wood energy into the forest sector’s interests in Chile and Sweden takes place in the context of important social-ecological conflicts related to industrial forestry development. Originality/value The paper’s analytical framework helps to analyse the social-ecological nature of international business and the way they organise material practices and communicative meaning around renewable energy. The paper’s findings and analysis shed light on important problematic aspects of the material and symbolic struggles around renewable energy in the context of climate change. The comparative dimension of the analysis has the value to offer a cross-border analysis to improve the understanding of some of the most important aspects of international businesses concerning wood energy today.

Science and Environmental Communication on YouTube: Strategically Distorted Communications in Online Videos on Climate Change and Climate Engineering

The online video-sharing website YouTube is extremely popular globally, also as a tool for information on science and environmental topics. However, only little is known about what kind of information users find when they are searching for information about climate science, climate change and climate engineering on YouTube. This contribution presents results from an exploratory research project that investigates whether videos found on YouTube adhere to or challenge scientific consensus views. Ten search terms were employed to search for and analyze 200 videos about climate and climate modification topics, which are contested topics in online media. The online anonymization tool Tor has been used for the randomization of the sample and to avoid personalization of the results. A heuristic qualitative classification tool was set up to categorize the videos in the sample. 89 videos of the 200 videos in the sample are supporting scientific consensus views about anthropogenic climate change, and climate scientists are discussing climate topics with deniers of climate change in 4 videos in the sample. Unexpectedly, the majority of the videos in the sample (107 videos) supports worldviews that are opposing scientific consensus views: 16 videos deny climate change and 91 videos in the sample propagate straightforward conspiracy theories about climate engineering and climate change. Videos supporting the scientific mainstream view received only slightly more views (16,941,949 views in total) than those opposing the mainstream scientific position (16,939,655 views in total). Consequences for the public communication of climate change and climate engineering are discussed in the second part of the article. The research presented in this contribution is particularly interested in finding out more about strategically distorted communications about climate change and climate engineering in online environments and in critically analyzing them.

The role of environmental practices and communication on guest loyalty: Examining EU-Ecolabel in Portuguese hotels

Abstract As a result of consumers’ concern toward environmental sustainability, the hospitality industry is developing voluntary-based tools to reduce its environmental impacts and to satisfy the increasing market segment of green customers. In this context, third-party certified ecolabels ensure hotel compliance with specific environmental performance criteria and offer reliable communication to their guests. Starting with the analysis of literature, we propose a conceptual framework to investigate whether green practices implemented by EU-Ecolabel certified hotels contribute significantly to the formation of guest positive behavioral intention toward green hotels. Firstly, a survey was conducted with guests of two Portuguese hotels awarded with EU-Ecolabel and 152 questionnaires were useable and employed in the analysis, adopting Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) to test the hypotheses. Next, five green hotels managers were interviewed to corroborate the results and acquire insights from a managerial viewpoint. Results show that: (1) guest environmental behavior in tourism accommodation influences guest loyalty toward green hotels and guest perception of hotel environmental communication; (2) guest perception of hotel environmental communication influences guest perception of hotel green practices and mediates the relationship between guest environmental behavior in tourism accommodation and guest perception of hotel green practices; (3) guest perception of hotel green practices influence guest loyalty toward green hotels. Research findings are valuable for both hotel managers and decision-makers, clarifying the role of environmental communication in the guest recognition of hotels environmental efforts. The study also confirms the relationship between the implementation of green practices and the raise of market awareness and loyalty towards green hotels.

Emplacing Climate Change: Civic Action at the Margins

In this paper, I use my work with the Gran Familia Awa Binacional (GFAB), an indigenous transboundary organization located at the border between Ecuador and Colombia, to redirect attention to ways organizations at-the-margins perform civic action. I understand at-the-margin organizations as those that (1) are not located in urban spaces; (2) have limited access to technology; and, (3) use non-dominant languages as a central element of their collective identity and struggle. Due to the increasing urban bio- and geo-graphy of the world, it seems that the literature on civic action has taken an expected shift in focus to reserve the attribution of civic action to movements taking place in cities; further, the influence attributed to technology in fostering collective action appears to divert attention away from organizations or movements whose practices are not dependent on, started from, and enhanced by technological innovations. I use Lichterman and Eliasoph’s (2014) definition of civic action — a kind of coordination that entails actions and relationships rather than beliefs, values, or a predefined social sector — to argue that as a communication practice and historicist inquiry (Briziarelli & Martinez Guillem, 2016), translation is an epistemological device used by at-the-margin organizations to create spaces for civic action via the constant process of disturbing the language and rethinking the meaning embedded in hegemonic global environmental discourses such as climate change. I illustrate how members of the GFAB emplace the meaning of climate change, which I argue, is a rhetorical move that suggests a phenomenological place-based conceptualization of climate change that could function as both, a decolonial strategy and a pragmatic environmental communication that constitutes spaces for civic action to thrive.

Framing Media Online atas Pemberitaan Isu Lingkungan Hidup Dalam Upaya Pencapaian Keberhasilan SDGs Indonesia

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), that have been carried out by Indonesia, are global programs launched by the United Nations since September 2015. This is proven by the Presidential Regulation No. 59 / 2017 about the Implementation of Achievement of Sustainable Development Goals which was inaugurated by President Jokowi in July 2017. Among 17 SDGs points, there are 6 points that talk about environmental issue. This shows the importance of environmental issues that are now a global concern. Information about SDGs to public is still not massive, even though SDGs socialization is very important for the society so that the final goal of SDGs in Indonesia will be successful in 2030. The aim of this study is to find ways for media that can fix current environmental problems and problems experienced by Indonesian SDGs. This study used Environmental Communication concept. For the methodology, this study uses framing from Pan & Kosicki, with 4 of the most frequently accessed online media in Indonesia, in 2018 namely Detik.com, Tribunnews.com, Kompas.com, and Liputan6.com. Pre-research results show that online media contains very little news about environmental issues in their program, implementation and process of achieving Indonesia's SDGs success.

Del espacio público al privado. Un análisis del problema de urbanización desde la comunicación ambiental

El propósito del trabajo es identificar la información que comparten algunas páginas gubernamentales y asociaciones civiles relacionadas con el medio ambiente, la educación ambiental y la sustentabilidad en la red sociodigital Facebook; asimismo, observar el tipo de publicaciones realizadas durante un lapso de cinco días del mes de octubre de 2019 para categorizarlas; de esta manera inferir el desenvolvimiento de las interacciones entre las instituciones u organizaciones y los usuarios a través del medio digital para revelar tendencias, relevancias y sesgos en la comunicación ambiental que difunden. Los resultados que se obtuvieron demuestran que las páginas de instituciones oficiales son quienes publican con mayor frecuencia, por lo que los usuarios responden con alguna reacción o like y comparten el contenido.

Practices in environmental communication. Case study: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility of Ecuador in the first semester, 2017

This research addresses the environmental problems from the communicative action of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility of Ecuador in the first semester of the year 2017. Through the construction of a theoretical framework in which the institution-social movement binomial is integrated, the planetary dimension of environmental issues is assumed analyzing the information published in the website of the Chancellor’s Office, in addition to its design and architecture of the information. For this purpose, and using the agendasetting theory, the thematic agenda has been extracted through an analysis sheet developed ad hoc for this work, with a mixed methodology and analytical method. In conclusion, environmental issues assume a secondary position in government communication.