Media Literacies - Assignment Example

?Running head: media Literacies Media Literacies 26th January Introduction Moral panic entails the strength of a reaction that is depicted by a population regarding the various issues that negatively affect the social order. Kenneth (1998) argues that a moral panic occurs when a group of people or conditions emerge within a society that acts as threats to the interests of the society. Moral entrepreneurs refer to the individuals or institutions that propagate a moral panic when they consider the extent to which a local or global event will cause a threat to the cultural, political or cultural values. In the recent, various forms of media including newspapers and magazines have covered various issues that arise from moral laxity. In the same way, televisions have been in the forefront in presenting documentaries that creates moral panic within the society. According to Baer and William (1997) the activities undertaken by the youth as well as the level of crimes have greatly contributed to the immorality and threats that are faced by members of the society. Contemporary moral panics are different from the earlier ones (Victor, 1993). For example, in the past the effects of the young people on the family values were seen as a major moral panic that undermined family values. In the contemporary world, Cohen (1980) noted that moral panics can be caused by an occurrence of any event. In the same way, he stipulates that there has been rapid succession of moral panics. This essay will argue that media has played a fundamental role in representing moral panic associated with climate change. Climate change has recently been represented by media with an aim of exposing the public on its role of contributing to the global warming and high temperatures that have been experienced in various parts of the world. One of the main duties of media is to mediate between the scientific approach on the climate change and the temperatures that have been recorded in various regions. Human activities that include production of electricity and combustion of fuel within the factories production facilities greatly contribute to the destruction of ozone layer thus leading to unsafe environment. In United States, English-speaking media has spearheaded the coverage of climate change as compared to media channels in other countries. Through the studies done on tabloid press in UK and US, 1995 and 2001 establishments of IPCC as far as the role of scientific consensus on climate is concerned, was not effectively covered by media. However, extensive media coverage was adopted in 2007 and in 2009. In 2007, wide media coverage was evident from An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary that was initiated by Al-Gore as well as the fourth assessment reports that was prepared by IPCC. In 2009, wide media coverage of climate change was catapulted by the UN climate change conference and the email controversy that engulfed the Climatic Research Unit (Mike, 2009). Media and journalists have been poorly informed about climate change. As a result, members of the public have little know how about the global warming despite the fact that it is a major challenge facing the contemporary world. Due to poor reporting of scientific issues that relate to climate changes, media scholars and reporters argue that three key distortions may arise. First, instead of journalists allocating more of their time to cover scientific aspects that relate to global warming and changes in climate, they specialize in writing stories that have human-interest. Secondly, journalists fail to provide balance between reporting of climatic changes and other stories. Thirdly, lack of adequate understanding of climate changes results to making of scientific errors. It is worth to note that in order to make policies that are effective in curbing global warming and nuclear power, it is vital to make the public more informed about climate changes. This can only be achieved if media and journalists provide accurate and reliable reports about climate change and global warming. Tammy and Lewis (2009), notes that one of the primary factors that contribute to inadequate public information regarding global warming is underestimation of popularizing science particularly in the field of climate changes by scientist and journalists. In its efforts to create a moral panic, media emulates the concept of alarmism. This involves use range of languages that are characterized with urgent tones during representation of climate changes. Even though newspapers, local and international magazines are well known for using alarmism, environment crusaders, government and non-governmental organizations are also known to use the alarmist languages. One of the major significance of such language is that it poses climate change as a catastrophe thus attracting the attention of the public. In addition, use of alarming language helps to evoke the public with the aim of making it to be aware of the issues of climate change. In UK left-leaning press criticizes the use alarmist language but on the other hand, right-leaning press emulates the language to inform the public of the various repercussion of climate change. Global cooling is one of the tactics used by media to address the aspect of climate change. Even though global cooling did not generate a reasonable support from scientific writers, it assisted the public to understand global warming based on the wide coverage by the media. However, some media speculated that just like the global cooling, global warming could also be dismissed by public. An example of a press that created a moral panic through its reports was the Time magazine. In June 1974, the editorial section of Time Magazine reported that the atmosphere was experiencing a cooling effect that exposed the world to the age of new ice. According to the Time Magazine man is to be blamed for both global warming and global cooling. Another article that emphasized on global warming as a recent cause of panic was represented by Irish Independent. The Irish Independent, which one of the major newspapers in Ireland argues that not only is the world concerned about global warming but also global cooling has generated a major panic among the public. United States media fraternity is known for its use of environmental skepticism to address the issues of climate change. According to the study done in 2004, authors in US confirmed that there was great need to remove media bias within the journalism industry. This resulted to a more balanced coverage of the climate change. This means that most of the articles that were published there after treated global warming and other social issues with equal attention. For example, most of the press gave a view that natural fluctuations were also causes of increase in earth’s temperature and that human beings were major contributors of global warming. This resulted to a hot debate among the public on the issues of global warming and the associated scientific evidence (Uusi-Rauva and Tienari, 2010). Another study on US television news and newspaper that was initiated in 2006 indicated that despite the consensus that was emerging regarding the science climate, US media represented contentions and a number of conflicting views on the subject. For instance, 1995 and 2001 IPCC reports established a strong consensus on the studies done on climate change (Cohen, 2001). However, media in US continued to present the aspect of climate change as a contentious issue that led to a moral panic. According to the US media the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are highly exaggerated. This implies that the actual causes of global warming and the role of man in climate change are not represented. In this regard, the US media maintains that a greater scrutiny of the challenges that are purported to cause global warming is vital. Based on the views of the media on climate change, the percentage of Americans who believe that there is an exaggeration on the seriousness of climate change, increased from 31% in 1997 to 48% in 2011(Michael, 2009). Some of the US major news papers that did not treat the global warming as a threat include Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and New York Times. The newspapers led to a believing that the role of man in causing global warming is a fiction and major causes are the solar cycles. For example, the role of global warming in causing El Nino was not emphasized by the media. In 1997, readers of New York Times were promised that the newspaper will examine the issues of climate change, science and politics revolving around global warming during a meeting on greenhouse gases in Japan. However, the Times did not deliver the promises to its loyal readers. Just like in US, United Kingdom tabloid press that includes Daily Express, Daily Mirror, The Sun and Daily Mail gave diverged views on climate change. The newspapers were not in consensus with scientific reports that indicated that human being are major causes of global warming. Antilla (2010) argues that lack of specialized journalists who were incompetent in presenting scientific reports on climate change; tabloid press reports on climate change were not consistent with the reports by prestige press in UK. UK tabloid press represented their views on climate change through weather events even though little coverage of climate justice was done. In their efforts to create fear among the readers and the general members of the public, tabloid press adopted headlines that portrayed doom and misery as well as feelings of fear. One of the significance of UK media is its efforts to cover issues concerned with climate change feedback. As stipulated by UK prestige press, the major causes of climate change in 1980s included chemical, nuclear and environmental issues. Based on the implications of the use of nuclear energy and biotechnology, new attention cycles on the society emerged. The occurrence of the environment hazards led to the rising of ecological concerns by the global community. According to Kenneth (1998) various issues are considered in order to understand the phenomenon of climate change moral panics. These include short-term and long-term crusades. In order to orient the global community on the implication of the global warming, UK media has spearheaded the covering of climate change crusades that have been held in various areas including Copenhagen, South Africa among other regions. During the Copenhagen carbon crusade, the media advocated for the contribution of all parties to ensure that global warming was effectively addressed. In the recent times, some media argues that human being highly contribute to the emission of carbon in the atmosphere through deforestation as a result of increased demand for paper products and wood. This led to development of moral panics through newspaper and other sources that warned global community on the negative repercussions of cutting down of trees and failure to plant more trees. Cohen (1980) stipulates that moral panic has continued to succeed each other and anything can spark a moral panic. For example, at one time children murder was a major cause of moral panic that further changed to bullying in schools (Kenneth, 1998). In the same way, the dangers associated with cutting down of trees was a major cause of moral panic as far as climate change is concerned has charged to emission of carbon due to industrialization and green revolution in the 20th century. Conclusion Two key groups that characterize a moral panic are folk devils and moral entrepreneur. As stipulated by Cohen (1980) while fork devils threaten a social order, moral entrepreneurs generate a panic when they deem it as a threat to the prevailing cultural, social and political values. In the contemporary world, media has played a significant role in exposing moral panic that is related to drug use, climate change and other social vices. It is worth to note that during formulation of climate policies, media is a major avenue that is used by members of the public to air their opinions. In this regard, it is imperative for media to provide actual and relevant scientific reports that can be emulated during the formation of climate policies. In order to do a way with value-action gap that is associated with climate change, it is paramount for media to emulate solution-oriented approaches instead of catastrophe frames that generate moral panic. References Antilla, L. (2010). Self-censorship and science: A geographical review of media coverage of climate tipping points. Public Understanding of Science doi:10.1177/0963662508094099 Baer, J and William J. 1997. Generating Fear: The Politics of Crime Reporting. Crime, Law and Social Change. Retrieved from https://springerlink3.metapress.com/content/h22l611k75p24m82/resource-secured/?target=fulltext.pdf&sid=zlm0rnqsfdoodk5e1g0xak2x&sh=www.springerlink.com Cohen, S. 2001.States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering. Maiden, MA: Polity. Retrieved from http://www2.lse.ac.uk/socialPolicy/researchcentresandgroups/mannheim/publications/cohen1.aspx Cohen, S. 1980. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. Oxford: M.Robertson. Retrieved from http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=eDhPbH9roU4C&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false Kenneth T. 1998. Moral Panics. London: Routledge. Retrieved from http://books.google.es/books?id=mADsU2VsU0sC&pg=PA143&hl=es&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false Michael, S. (2009). Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. New York: Penguin Press HC, The. ISBN 978-1-59420-230-8 Mike, H. (2009). Why we disagree about climate change: understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-72732-4. Tammy B., Lewis, J. (2009). Climate Change and the Media (Global Crises and the Media). London: Peter Lang Publishing. ISBN 1-4331-0460-1. Uusi-Rauva, C., Tienari, J. (2010). On the relative nature of adequate measures: Media representations of the EU energy and climate package. Global Environmental Change 20 (3): doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.03.001. Victor S (1993). Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend. New York: Open Court Publishing Company. Retrieved from http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=abJqF8csPrQC&pg=PA181&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false Read More

 

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