Media and conservation

An investigation into the ecological impact of Planet Earth II, and asking whether it can be used as a model for future natural history programming. Featuring an interview from Planet Earth II producer Elizabeth White, a survey of the public, and a literature review from contemporary media - the essay argues that we must look beyond mainstream productions in a truly ecological future.

Misrepresentation of terminology is a major impediment for attempts at enhancing public conservation literacy. Despite being critically important for improving conservation practice, there have been few systematic analyses of the popular use of conservation terminology. This paper draws from science communication studies and metaphor analysis, to examine how keystone, flagship and umbrella species concepts are used and represented in non-academic contexts. 557 news articles containing these terms were systematically analyzed. Mammals featured in 60% of articles on keystones, 55% on flagships and 63% on umbrella species. Number of articles explaining the terms keystone (35%) and flagship (31%) was low, and keystones were the most misrepresented term. Keystones were metaphorically linked with balance, flagships with representation and umbrella species with protection. These metaphors influenced public interpretation of scientific terminology, oriented actions towards select species, and led to a valuation of such actions. Together, the findings highlight three important aspects of popular use of conservation terminology: (1) communication is largely biased towards mammals, (2) everyday language plays a vital role in the interpretation of concepts, and (3) metaphors influence peoples’ actions and understanding. Conservation biologists need to engage with issues of language if public conservation literacy is to be improved. Further evaluations of concepts with high public and policy relevance, systematic identification of communication shortfalls, and linguistic assessments prior to promoting new terms are potential ways of achieving this.

The media play a key role in communicating conservation issues such as human-wildlife conflict, but corresponding literature on how issues are represented is limited. This article traces the depiction of human-elephant conflict in the media by examining (a) how conflicts are framed and (b) how ultimate and proximate causes are communicated in Indian and international newspapers. Issues were often polarized or framed in dramatic terms, and consonance in reporting causes was lacking. Active engagement with the media is needed to produce a nuanced debate on conflict, for which recognizing the role of different actors and working closely with individual journalists are vital.

An investigation into the ecological impact of Planet Earth II, and asking whether it can be used as a model for future natural history programming. Featuring an interview from Planet Earth II producer Elizabeth White, a survey of the public, and a literature review from contemporary media - the essay argues that we must look beyond mainstream productions in a truly ecological future.

An investigation into the ecological impact of Planet Earth II, and asking whether it can be used as a model for future natural history programming. Featuring an interview from Planet Earth II producer Elizabeth White, a survey of the public, and a literature review from contemporary media - the essay argues that we must look beyond mainstream productions in a truly ecological future.

Have you ever considered, or been challenged by, recent heritage and artistic production based on film, video and computer code, the so-called non-traditional media? These media are, in a sense, nothing really new, since they are already a part of our increasingly mediatized culture. Indubitably, digital media cast their shadow on every aspect of modern life; they both form our culture and are being formed by it. Changeable by nature, digital media question established views considering what an artwork is, or might be, and what is being exhibited and preserved, as well as what enters the realm of cultural memory, and in which configuration. Being in the process of continuous reformulation and in and rescription, these artworks move between formats and platforms, seemingly unconcerned with the gravity of their physical carriage—media as vehicles, as it were, of the concept, a floating synthesis of an artist’s mind and all those engaged in the work’s genesis. But beware: the future of ever-expanding digital memory comes upon us, an immortalization gesture of sorts, directed against forgetting and oblivion.

For a full version of this review, follow this link to JStore: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/movingimage.17.1.0163?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents