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Teaching and Learning Resource (TLR)

1. Title

EnviroFile: Representations of environment/nature in the mass media

2. Keywords

Broadcast media; print media; media monitoring; environmental representations; media analysis; critical appraisal.

3. Introduction

Students of geography, environmental studies and allied subjects are accustomed to using the broadcast and news media - along with other forms of mass communication, such as the political/public relations output of business corporations, pressure groups, tourist authorities, governments and embassies etc - as source materials for ‘project’ work. While most students entering higher education are broadly acquainted with ideas about media selectivity and ‘spin’ - and may in some respects be capable of quite sophisticated ‘readings’ of the mass media - many are unfamiliar with the skills required for systematic critical appraisal of these sources.

For educational purposes, students may be in the habit of tacitly distinguishing between more and less ‘informative’ media sources (e.g. between broadsheet and tabloid newspapers); between more and less ‘biased’ sources (e.g. between the political partisanship of national newspapers and the ‘impartiality’ of public service broadcasters); and between ‘fictional’ and ‘factual’ (especially news, current affairs and documentary) output. But continued adherence to these mainly ‘common-sense’-derived distinctions, if unchallenged, tends to obscure the ‘problematic’ nature of all mass media outputs; and may impede the overall development of students’ critical faculties.

Thus, students of the environment can benefit from learning to critically appraise mass media outputs, by asking questions such as:

• What images and understandings of environment/nature are being promoted?
• What linguistic and other devices of reasoning and rhetoric are being deployed in support of these images and understandings?
• What underlying assumptions, values and/or interests are reflected in these images and understandings?
• What relationships exist between media sources (e.g. pressure groups, businesses, politicians, academics), media actors (e.g. proprietors, editors, journalists) and media audiences?

Arguably, these media-related skills of critical appraisal are becoming increasingly important in higher education - particularly to the extent that pressures for ‘vocational relevance’ are tending to enhance the influence and prestige of business and other stakeholders within HE; and to the extent that many students now routinely use Internet-based (and other) political/public relations output in their learning.

Arguably also, students should bring similar skills and questions to the appraisal of academic texts: for example, to representations of environmental questions, whose provisional and contested science may well be portrayed as definitive and consensual; and whose values and assumptions may be so widely shared as to evade critical examination, particularly when cloaked in linguistic and other academic conventions which are themselves commonly associated with objectivity or neutrality.

4. Aim

The aim of this TLR is to assist students in developing transferable skills associated with active learning and critical appraisal, notably the capacity to think critically about representations of environment/nature in mass media and (indirectly) other texts.

5. Learning outcomes

In undertaking the EnviroFile project, students will become more familiar with mass media representations of the environment/nature, and will gain experience in:

• Constructing an indicative selection (i.e. not a sample, strictly speaking) of current mass media output, focusing on material of direct or indirect environmental relevance.
• Critically appraising mass media representations - particularly for the images and understandings of environment/nature that are being promoted; for the linguistic and other textual devices that are deployed in support of those images and understandings; for underlying assumptions, values and interests; and for other aspects of their social and environmental significance.
• Working independently in a group, and making an audio-visual presentation.

6. Pre-requisites

The TLR does not require any specialist knowledge of environmental or media studies, textual analysis etc. However, students should have some ability to think critically about the explicit and implicit messages conveyed in mass media representations of environment/nature - rather than simply regarding media output as a neutral ‘information’, for the study of environmental issues. They should also have some knowledge of ‘environmental values’, and an ability to analyse the value content of texts. Where this is lacking, one or more of the following TLRs could be used prior to this one:

• Introduction to Environmental Values
• Approaches in Environmental Ethics
• Guidelines for the Analysis of Environmental Values in Texts

Students using this TLR should also be capable of working independently (albeit with instructions) in a group; and should be able to use the recording, editing and other equipment necessary for their particular project, ideally with limited supervision.

7. How to use TLR

The TLR could run in parallel with a lecture and/or other ‘taught’ programme e.g. as one component of a course on geography/environment and the mass media/popular culture. Used near the start of such a course, it may serve to familiarise students with the mass media and their environmentally-relevant output, and to generate ‘raw material’ for more informed analysis at a later stage.

A suggested programme of activities is given in the table below, which has been designed with a class of around 25 students in mind. However the organisation and scale of learning activities (e.g. number of students per group, number of media monitored by each group, duration of monitoring), and the level of sophistication expected of students’ analyses, can all be adjusted to suit local circumstances. It may also be possible to construct individual learning activities along the lines proposed here; and the analytical framework could be adapted for individual or group work on specific ‘genres’ of media output (e.g. news broadcasts, advertising, or individual media ‘texts’). However the model proposed here is based on group monitoring and analysis of one medium (e.g. one radio or television station, or newspaper) - potentially including all types of output - over a minimum of four days or issues.

Assessment could be formative or summative; could be based on oral and/or written presentations; and could include elements of self-, peer- and/or tutor-assessment. The model proposed here is based on the tutor’s assessment of oral and written presentations.

8. Instructions to students

I. INTRODUCTION: WORKING IN A GROUP

You will work throughout the EnviroFile project in a group with 3 or 4 members, whose task will be to select and analyse a cross-section of environmentally relevant output from one broadcast (TV or radio) or print medium. You will also submit a group file of your selected media output, and will be assessed - as a group - on the basis of an audio-visual presentation and written report.

Effective communication and co-ordination of your group’s efforts are vital to success on the EnviroFile project!

II. CHOOSING YOUR MEDIUM AND SELECTING YOUR OUTPUT

Each group will be asked to indicate their preferred medium, from the list in Appendix One, which includes:

• Broadcast media - all terrestrial television stations; major national and local radio stations.
• Print media - broadsheet and tabloid (including national and some local) newspapers; and a number of more specialist - but ‘popular’ - environment/politics/science publications.

Final allocations (one medium per group) will be made by your tutor, to ensure that the class as a whole is able to share findings from a range of media.

Sunday [date x] - Saturday [date y] will be the principal monitoring week. Daily newspapers and broadcast media should be monitored over a period of at least four days. For weekly newspapers and less frequent publications, the current issue and at least three immediately preceding it should be monitored.

It will not be possible for you to collect a genuinely representative sample of items from your chosen medium, mainly because of the relatively small scale (especially, short duration) of the EnviroFile project. You should, however, try to select items that reflect the typical output of your medium.

When making your selection, you should seek to include:

• Material which is explicitly environmental in nature, and material which has implicit environmental relevance (e.g. items relating to transport policy, consumer affairs).
• Material containing environmentally ‘hostile’, as well as ‘sympathetic’, messages.

Selecting items from a broadcast medium

Your selection may include:

• News and current affairs material.
• Natural history and environmental/public health ‘issue’ documentaries and ‘magazine’ programmes.
• Lifestyle and consumer affairs material.
• ‘Fly on the wall’ or ‘docu-drama’ output, e.g. pertaining to animals, or to natural and other hazards.
• Satirical broadcasting.
• Situation comedy, soap opera, drama and film.
• Children’s broadcasting.
• Advertising.

Note: This is not an exhaustive list of the possible categories from which items may be selected. Nor are the categories mutually exclusive: for example, some news programmes, and a considerable amount of advertising, is targeted principally at children.

For every item selected from your broadcast medium, you should record contextual information using the table in Appendix Two.

Selecting items from a print medium

Your selection might include:

• News reporting within the (normally daily or weekly) time-frame of the medium.
• Extended ‘investigative’ coverage of environmental or public health ‘issues’.
• Editorial comment on news ‘events’.
• ‘Campaigning’-style journalism, which portrays the medium in an ‘active’ role vis-à-vis the ‘issues’ and ‘events’ it reports - and which may invite an ‘active’ response from readers.
• Letters to the editor.
• Comment by regular ‘columnists’ on topical ‘issues’.
• Cartoons and other humorous (often satirical) comment on news ‘events’.
• Lifestyle and consumer affairs material.
• Entertainment, arts and media ‘review’ material.

For every item selected from your print medium, you should record contextual information using the table in Appendix Three.

III. RECORDING AND EDITING YOUR MATERIAL [indicative instructions only]

Broadcast output should be recorded on video or audio tape, as appropriate. Initial recording should be done on your own cassettes (which can be re-used once editing is complete). In the case of video recording, you are advised to use good quality branded cassettes (costing approximately £3 for a three-hour tape) - in order to ensure that reproduction of the edited selection is itself of an appropriate quality. Limited assistance with recording can be provided (normally by prior arrangement), but it is expected that you will take responsibility for most recording work. Technical support will be provided on request (normally by prior arrangement) for editing of audio- and video-recorded material, and cassettes will be provided for this purpose. After editing, material from a broadcast medium should normally include at least 8-10 individual items or extracts.

Print medium selections should be assembled as a file, normally containing at least 8-10 photocopied and/or scanned items.

In general it is anticipated that the more successful EnviroFiles will not necessarily be more substantial in quantity (e.g. in column inches or broadcast time), but will tend to contain a wider variety of material (and, perhaps, a greater number of shorter items).

IV. ANALYSING YOUR SELECTION

You should analyse your selection as a whole with reference to ideas encountered during lectures, private reading etc, and should particularly attempt to address the following points:

1. Approximately what proportion of the medium as a whole is devoted to issues of an explicitly environmental nature?
2. From the contextual information recorded in Appendix Two or Three, which formats and genres appear most closely associated with explicitly and implicitly environmental output?
3. What are the explicitly environmental items about, and what ‘messages’ (e.g. priorities, policy prescriptions, other value judgements) are they conveying? For example, is the environment/nature portrayed negatively, especially as a threat to humans - or is it represented positively, either in terms of its values to humans and/or of its ‘intrinsic’ values? To what extent are the messages consistent with one another - or are they contradictory?
4. What are the implicitly environmental items about, and what ‘messages’ are they conveying? To what extent are they consistent with one another - and to what extent are they consistent with the explicit messages?
5. Comment, with examples, on the reasoning (e.g. use of science), language, rhetoric, images and symbols etc used to communicate ‘arguments’ of an explicitly or implicitly environmental nature, including juxtapositions of (for example) text, pictures/graphics and/or music; and camera angles/perspectives.
6. Especially for news and current affairs items, comment on the sources (e.g. pressure groups, politicians, scientists) whose views are cited - and whether those views are endorsed, discredited or reported neutrally.
7. Especially for news and current affairs items also, comment on the possible use of story ‘hooks’ and ‘frames’. Story ‘hooks’ are those immediately prevailing circumstances which provide the rationale for a report or expression of opinion at that particular moment (e.g. publication of a scientific report, political meeting or announcement, pressure group campaign). Story ‘frames’ are those wider themes and other ideas (e.g. ‘good’ versus ‘evil’, David versus Goliath’, human tragedy or triumph, ‘progress’, human conquest of nature) which confer greater significance and appeal on a story than interpretation in terms of its unique qualities alone might allow.
8. To what extent does the medium as a whole appear to adopt a coherent position on the environment - either explicitly or implicitly? For example, does it occupy a position which is broadly technocentric or ecocentric?

V. ASSESSMENT

Assessment will be based on each group’s audio-visual presentation and the written report, equally weighted. It is expected that the same marks will be awarded to each member of a given group; but marks will be adjusted, where appropriate, in the light of evidence concerning individual contributions.

Written reports and audio-visual presentations which exceed the upper word or time limits (given below) will normally be penalised.

The assessment criteria are shown in Appendix Four.

Audio-visual presentation

Your group should be prepared to make a class presentation of no more than 12 minutes on [date]. The presentation should provide:

• Contextual information pertaining to your medium, e.g. daily national newspaper or 24 hour regional radio station; ownership and mode of operation (e.g. commercial or public service broadcaster); legal/corporate/professional commitments, (e.g. to impartiality); general nature and range of content; size and composition of audience.
• A tabulated list of contents of your EnviroFile, based on Appendix Two or Three.
• A summary of your selection methods - in particular, how you sought to make your selection as representative (of the medium’s output) as reasonably possible.
• A flavour of your selected output (e.g. by playing video extracts or showing newspaper articles) and of your analysis.

Remember that overhead transparencies and/or handouts are an effective way of summarising information and emphasising your main points.

Written report

The written group report, and individual diaries from each group member, should be submitted on [date], if possible as a single document. This should be accompanied by your group’s media selection, either on cassette or on paper.

The written report itself should include:

• Contextual information pertaining to the medium (as for the audio-visual presentation: see above).
• A tabulated list of contents (as above).
• A summary of your selection methods (as above).
• An analysis of your selection (no more than 800 words).
• An evaluation of the group’s work.
• A list of published works cited in support of your analysis.

Each individual student’s diary should provide a brief chronological record of their contribution to the group’s work. All those present at meetings etc in which you participated should be identified, but no evaluation of individual contributions is required.

9. Stimulus Material

None, other than the list of media (provided in Appendix One) and the Recommended reading (see below).

10. Degree stage

As noted above (Pre-requisites), the TLR does not require any specialist knowledge of environmental or media studies, textual analysis etc. It can, therefore, be used with students who are operating at any undergraduate level - though more experienced students would be expected to produce more sophisticated analyses.

11. Resource requirements

Students will need access to some or all of the following:

• print and broadcast media of their choice
• audio- and video-recording, editing and play-back facilities
• audio- and video-cassettes
• scanner
• overhead projector

12. Preparation

None.

13. Links with other TLRs

The following TLRs are also concerned with representations of environment/nature in the mass media:

• Environmental Analysis of Films - Part 1: Exploring the Diversity
• Environmental Analysis of Films - Part 2: Case Study of 'The Grapes of Wrath'
• Environmental Analysis of Adverts
• ‘Water on the Moon’ Part 1: Simulated Debate
• ‘Water on the Moon’ Part 2: Critical Media Text Analysis
• ‘Water on the Moon’ Part 3: Letters to the Editor
• The Brent Spar Conflict: Critical Analysis of the Greenpeace Case

Though not concerned explicitly with the mass media, the following are amongst those other TLRs which nonetheless deal with environmental representations and their critical appraisal:

• Classifying Knowledge Claims
• Evaluating the Credibility of Knowledge Claims
• A Guide to the Critical Reading of Scientific Research Papers
• Critical Reading of Corporate Environmental Reports: A Discourse-Based Approach
• Critical Book Review
• Virtual Climate Change: Critical Evaluation of Internet Sources

More generally, the aims and/or learning outcomes of this TLR are related to those of other TLRs listed in the following 'thematic cluster':

• Environment and the mass media

14. Follow-up activities

This TLR itself has some potential to generate follow-up activities, e.g. individual or group work on specific ‘genres’ of media output (see above, How to use TLR). Additionally, any of the TLRs identified above (Links with other TLRs) as being concerned with representations of environment/nature in the mass media could be used for follow-up work.

15. Recommended reading

• The mass media

Allen, S et al (eds) (2000) Environmental Risks and the Media. Routlegde

Anderson, A (1997) Media, Culture and the Environment. UCL Press, London

Curran, J (1990) ‘Cultural Perspectives of News Organisations: A Reappraisal and a Case Study’. In M Ferguson (ed) Public Communication: The New Imperatives: Future Directions for Media Research. Sage Publications

Eldridge, J (ed) (1993). Getting the Message: News, Truth and Power. Routledge

Fowler, R (1991) Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. Routledge, London

The Guardian (1999) The 2000 Media Guide. The Guardian

Hansen, A (ed) (1993) The Mass Media and Environmental Issues. Leicester University Press

Vujakovic, P (1998) ‘Reading between the lines: using news media materials for geography’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, volume 22, number 1, pp147-155

• Environmental philosophy

Fox, W (1990) Towards a Transpersonal Ecology; Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism. Shambhala Publications, Mass., USA (also has British publisher, Green Books?). About Deep Ecology and Naess (but Chapter 6 also provides a good overview of a range of ecophilosophical positions)

Devall, B and Sessions, G (1985) Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered. Gibbs Smith, Layton, Utah. Includes chapters on wilderness and resource conservation

Regan, T (1982) ‘The nature and possibility of an environmental ethic’ (chapter 9, pp184-205 ) in All that Dwell Within: Essays on Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics. University of California Press. Looks at the concept of inherent value and applies it to non-animal nature.

• Journals

Environmental Ethics

Environmental Values

Media, Culture and Environment

Appendix One

Appendix Two

EnviroFile Contents and Contextual information for Broadcast Medium Items

Group Members: __________________________________________________

Medium: _________________________________________________________

Appendix Three

EnviroFile Contents and Contextual information for Print Medium Items

Group Members: __________________________________________________

Medium: _________________________________________________________

Appendix Four

Assessment: EnviroFile Project

Group Members: __________________________________________________

Medium: _________________________________________________________

Key: 3 = very good; 2 = satisfactory; 1 = unsatisfactory; 0 = not covered.

Additional Comments:

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Final Mark: ___________ Tutor: _________________________________