Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2009. / Communication Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

This paper interrogates local South African news media coverage of environmental issues affecting the poor and marginalized, particularly in regard to issues such as pollution, water contamination and the destruction of natural habitats. As such, this study focuses on content from The Weekend Post and The Herald from 2010 onwards. Issues such as pollution, in its various forms (air, water and land), are often under reported and not discussed. Essentially, these issues become matters about which little-to-nothing is done, particularly when it affects the poor. This notion of ‘dumping’ or moving environmental issues to affect poorer or disadvantaged people (normally of colour), is known as ‘environmental racism’. This paper will explore the media’s role in regard to these environmental issues and how it depicts, emphasizes or de-emphasizes the importance and urgency of these issues, especially those issues affecting poor or working class people.

This thesis explores whether or not it is possible to positively inflect – via digital means – people’s orientations toward nature through connecting their duration to the time of animals. The thesis opens with an overview of the contemporary environmental crisis, mapping related significant discourses, events and responses from the early 1960s onward. In this regard, after thematizing the relatively ineffective global institutional response to the environmental crisis to date – in spite of both consistent criticisms proffered by a range of stakeholders and widely available information on the scope of current environmental degradation – the lack of any concerted effort to deal with this issue is accounted for in terms of the dimensions of what Kilbourne, Beckmann and Thelen refer to as the ‘Dominant Social Paradigm’ (DSP). However, it is argued that of these dimensions, the technological dimension is most amenable to pro-environmental inflection, particularly through recent developments within information technology. That is, despite the latter being the privileged technology of neoliberalism, and despite the environmental cost of its current material infrastructure, it is also highly unlikely that societies will abandon their dependence on information technology in the near future. Given this, the importance of considering how such technology can be harnessed to positively re-orientate users’ perceptions of the natural world, in a way that also avoids the pitfall of technophilia, is advanced. In terms of this, both positive and negative appraisals of information technology by prominent new media theorists are discussed, and information technology is put forward as a tool that remains indeterminate in terms of its use. After this, and with a view to exploring how the technological dimension of the DSP might possibly be inflected in a pro-environmental manner, the thesis draws on the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari who promote desire and difference outside the ambit of capitalism, particularly through desubjectivation in relation to their concept of ‘becoming-animal.’ Finally, after dealing in addition with some potential theoretical challenges to the application of Deleuze’s ideas within the digital realm, focus shifts to three contemporary digital artefacts which have the capacity, albeit to varying degrees, to facilitate a becoming-animal. In this regard, a distinction is made between those artefacts that precipitate first-, second- and third-order hybrid durationality, and it is argued that the latter category presents the greatest promise of interfacing the time of humans with the time of animals.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 2007. / Adviser: Oscar H. Gandy, Jr. Includes bibliographical references.

Bibliography: p. 134-137. / The past three years (1987 -1990) have seen an increase in environmental coverage and a widening of the press' interest to include broader environmental issues. This increase raises the question of the way in which the press is presenting environmental issues, since the press could play an important role in the development of environmental awareness among the public. The aim of the study was to identify factors that could be influential in encouraging or discouraging environmental coverage, and the type and extent of coverage. The study identified factors influential in the coverage of three environmental issues, global warming, atmospheric ozone depletion, and the Sappi paper mill effluent spill into Eastern Transvaal rivers (1989), in two South African daily newspapers, The Star and The Citizen. A combination quantitative-qualitative content analysis was undertaken on reports by these newspapers to assess the nature of the news values operating during coverage (to determine what made the issues newsworthy), and the existence of editorial bias toward or against the environment. Interviews were conducted with a small sample of news personnel and individuals active in the Sappi effluent spill issue to contextualise the results of the content analyses. The study method was undertaken within the theoretical frame of newspaper agenda-setting. The results showed that despite differences in editorial bias and source use, the newspapers on the whole displayed the same news values in covering the issues. The main news values operating were a focus on the dangerous and controversial aspects, a preference for 'hard news' events, the relevance of an issue for readers and the activities of elite persons or nations in the issue. This indicated event-orientation by the press, and a tendency to sensationalise environmental issues. Some over-simplification of the full ramifications of the issues, particularly the atmospheric issues, was found to be operating. The implications of these approaches for environmental reporting and the reader's perception of the environment were discussed. Logistical factors (intra- and extra-organisational constraints) were also found to play a part in coverage. A wide range of factors were identified that operate, to a greater or lesser degree at different times, in press coverage of environmental issues. These were : - the newspaper perception of its role in society, - editorial policy, resources of the newspaper, area of distribution, the 'hardness' of news, the complexity of the issue, - the availability of accredited sources, the health of the national economy, international economic trends, the amount and type of other news, 'competitive bind', public awareness of environmental issues, and the role of an environmentally-committed individual in the newspaper organisation.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 131-141). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M. Env. Sc.)--University of Adelaide, Mawson Graduate Centre for Environmental & Geographical studies, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-128).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-116). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (p. 254-277). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Submitted for the Degree of Master of Technology: Graphic Design, Durban Institute of Technology Durban, 2005. / This document discusses the motivation for and the process of making a 52 minute television Art documentary designed to inform and to create an awareness of the problem of modern culture and its impact on the environment. Drawing on qualitative research from a worldwide research journey, it investigates modern culture's socially conditioned state and how television has assisted to that end. It then explores the philosophical views and constructs behind the Sixties movement and Rainbow - an alternative social collective that evolved out of the Sixties Movement, and uses these findings to serve as the creative basis for the making of the film, The Search for Utopia. / M