Author: Julie Doyle
Institution: University of Brighton

Keywords: environment, media, sustainability, curriculum

Introduction
The title of this article is based on a comment made by a first year BA (Hons.) Media Studies student at the University of Brighton in 2010. It was raised at the Course Board, where student representatives feed back to the teaching team the views of the student cohort regarding their modules and course. The comment related to a teaching week called ‘Communicating the Environment’ which was part of a core first year module titled ‘Critical Approaches to the Media’, which introduces students to key concepts and theories within the field of Media Studies. Including topics such as media audiences, public sphere, ICTs in everyday life, popular culture, and globalisation, the inclusion of a week on ‘the environment’ was felt by students to be tangential to the field. So why didn’t the students see the relevance of ‘the environment’ to Media Studies? And how do such views relate to (or even contradict) recent findings by the National Union of Students and the Higher Education Academy that students are increasingly choosing universities according to their sustainability agendas (Bone and Agombar, 2011)? Given the unknown impact the increase in fees will have upon student expectations of higher education, particularly in the arts and humanities, the foundational role that universities and particular subject areas can play in the promotion of sustainability is a positive and exciting prospect. Yet, the barriers that exist which prevent student engagement with issues of environment and sustainability, across disciplines, but importantly within specific subject areas such as Media Studies, also need to be understood and explored. In this article, therefore, I offer some thoughts and reflections upon my own experiences of teaching ‘the environment’ to undergraduate and postgraduate Media Studies students at the University of Brighton over the last four years, with a focus upon media theory rather than media practice. I will then consider possible ways forward for thinking about how we can engage Media students with sustainability and environmental issues, but which hopefully have resonance across a range of subject areas.

Environment and Media Studies: exploring its history
Communication plays a central role in how we understand the environment and what constitutes it. Anders Hansen reminds us that:

'Communication is central to how we come to know, and to know about, the environment and environmental issues, and the major communication media are a central public arena through which we become aware of environmental issues and the way they are addressed, contested and resolved' (Hansen, 2011, p.9).

Media (and Communication and Cultural) Studies research and teaching plays a central role in understanding how environmental issues are constructed, contested, understood and acted upon. Yet, the importance of mediated communication in understanding the environment appears not to be getting through to our students. One obvious answer is to explore the status of the environment as a topic of concern within the discipline – thus, we could turn around the question and ask, where is ‘the environment’ within Media Studies research? Hansen correctly claims that since the 1990s, and during the last decade in particular, environmental communication research has matured into an established field. However, it is still a relatively small subsection of Media and Communication Studies. This is evident when we take a brief look at the number of book publications on environment and media produced over the last 20 years. In the UK and USA, these include: Anders Hansen (ed), The Mass Media and Environmental Issues (1993); Alison Anderson, Media, Culture and Environment (1997); Barbara Adam, Stuart Allan, and Cynthia Carter (eds), Environmental Risks and the Media (2000); Robert Cox, Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere (2006); Julia B. Corbett, Communicating Nature (2006); Tammy Boyce and Justin Lewis (eds.), Climate Change and the Media (2009); Libby Lester, Media and Environment (2010); and Anders Hansen, Environment, Media and Communication (2010). This constitutes a very small amount over such a long period of time. Research often sets the agenda for teaching. Is it any wonder then that students do not think matters of the environment and sustainability are central to the discipline?

Yet, the last five years or so has seen a marked increase in disciplinary engagements with environment and sustainability, particularly within the professional organisations of Media and Communication Studies, for example: MeCCSA’s Climate Change, Environment and Sustainability Network (UK); the Science and Environment Communication Section of ECREA (Europe); the long standing Environment, Science, and Risk Communication Working Group of the IAMCR (International); the Environmental Communication Division of NCA (USA); and the newly established International Environmental Communication Association (ICEA). These developments are accompanied by changes in institutional context, with many UK Universities now signed up to the 10:10 campaign. These are important commitments given that universities are one of the largest contributors to climate change, producing 72,000 tonnes of CO2 per year (about eight tonnes for each member of staff and student) (Berners-Lee, 2010). Given the developments in media research on the environment over the last decade, the possibilities for incorporating issues of the environment and sustainability into the curriculum are immense.

Hansen (2011) usefully identifies three different approaches to the analysis of the environment within Media Studies, which can easily be incorporated in our curriculum and teaching practices:

1. Production of environmental communication
Analysing who is producing communication about the environment and what forms of media are being used. 

2. Media representations of the environment
Examining the ideological and discursive construction of the environment through a focus upon representation.

3. Social/political implications of environmental communication
Considering the effect communication has upon public/political perceptions and action on the environment.

Apart from these three broad approaches – which are also mutually interlinked – there are important ways that Media Studies can contribute to a more fundamental (or conceptual) questioning of how our (in)actions are shaped by communication and construction of the environment / environmental issues. For example, one of the reasons the environment is viewed as a specialist interest subject is due to its historical and conceptual framing as something that is separate from culture and humans (Adam, 1998). Such distinctions can be questioned through the focus of our research, but also by making the environment a central aspect of the field of Media Studies research and teaching.

Curriculum possibilities
One way of incorporating the environment into the curriculum is to include it as one week in a core introductory Media module in Year 1, and then develop this focus in Years 2 and 3 through more specific modules. This means that the environment is not viewed as a specialist interest subject, but as a key aspect of Media Studies teaching and research. This can be done in a number of ways. One way would be to begin by discussing the difficulties involved in communicating environmental issues through mainstream media. For example, Year 1 core module ‘Critical Approaches to Media’ introduces students to the topic ‘Communicating the Environment’.  We explore the problems associated with communicating environmental issues that are often long-term and invisible, in the context of mainstream media news values which focus upon the dramatic, the spectacular and short-term. As such, students’ understanding of news values is contextualized through the reporting of environmental issues and questioning of what constitutes ‘the environment’. In Year 2, the ‘Journalism’ module focuses one week on environmental journalism, where students explore different forms of environmental journalism (mainstream media; independent media; citizen; PR). In another Year 2 module called ‘Visual Culture’, I incorporate a discussion of climate change communication through the genre of documentary. Through the characteristics and conventions of documentary, the students compare how the ‘evidence’ of climate change is presented in David Attenborough’s Are We Changing Planet Earth? (2006) and Franny Armstrong’s The Age of Stupid (2009). On the same module, a week on advertising and consumer culture enables a discussion of the environmental impacts of consumption. In Year 3, the ‘Mediating Science and Technology’ module explores the concept of risk through a case study of GM food, supported by a screening of the documentary, The World According to Monsanto (Marie-Monique Robin, 2008). On the same module, we spend a week on climate change communication, discussing the notion of scientific (un)certainty and the difficulties of communicating climate change and making it meaningful to a general public.

What are the challenges of incorporating these issues into the curriculum? Media Studies students still tend to see the environment as specialist interest even when incorporated into modules. They tend to respond better when environmental issues are framed less explicitly as ‘the environment’. For example, the framing of climate change communication through theories of documentary on the ‘Visual Culture’ module seems to work well because it isn’t explicitly framed as ‘the environment’. In the last two years, a number of students have chosen to write about The Age of Stupid in their final essay, although module feedback from this year’s cohort also stated that there was too much on the environment!  Whilst such views can be frustrating, they do offer valuable insights into how students best learn about the environment and sustainability.  The Year 3 ‘Mediating Science and Technology’ module frames an exploration of climate change and GM food in the context of a questioning of the political and cultural aspects of scientific knowledge production. Many students choose essays on climate change communication, indicating that when environmental and sustainability issues are incorporated into a module and align with the more general aims of that module, students respond positively.

Such experience supports the findings of recent research into first year attitudes to the teaching of sustainability, ‘as 65% of respondents believe that sustainability skills should be delivered throughout the curriculum rather than through a separate module’ (Bone and Agombar, 2011, p.6). I am mindful of this even when delivering my MA module ‘Mediating the Environment’, chosen by students who are specifically interested in the environment, but who do not necessarily identify as environmentalists. Over the four years this module has been delivered, I have continuously changed the content as I have been increasingly concerned that theorising about the construction and communication of the environment may not always lead to changes in practice, crucial to the goal of sustainability. Thus, I have included more case studies that link issues of environment and sustainability to our everyday actions, such as the ethics of particular forms of food consumption.

Theory and practice
Continuous reflection on the relevancy of chosen topics is crucial in order to help us explore the potential tensions between theory and practice in the teaching of environment and sustainability. This involves understanding how, or the extent to which, theory and critical analysis changes student and academic practices; but also how the practices of media production, or media practitioners, can contribute to more productive and meaningful engagements with issues of environment and sustainability. Whilst I agree with Barbara Adam’s assertion that ‘theory is political in the sense that it is the basis for value-laden action’ (Adam, 1988, p.6), I also want to acknowledge the need for what Alex Lockwood has called  ‘self-reflexivity in academic practice’ (Lockwood, 2009, p.6). As academics and educators, we need to put our theories into practice, by changing some of our own everyday and professional activities, such as flying to conferences.  Being self-reflexive illustrates the personal approach to sustainability teaching, with educators acting as role models to students (Dawe, Jucker and Martin, p. 2005).

Before offering some final reflections on the teaching of environment and sustainability within Media Studies, I would like to share the experiences of developing and delivering a single honours undergraduate degree programme in Environment and Media Studies because it highlights two important aspects of sustainability education: interdisciplinarity and institutional support.

Interdisciplinary teaching/research and institutional support
The BA (Hons) Environment and Media Studies degree at the University of Brighton was validated in 2009 and has been running for two years. Developed in the context of the University of Brighton’s Corporate Plan (2007-12), which identifies sustainability as one of its five core values, the course is taught jointly across Geography, Environment and Media Studies. Its single honours status is important because we want to make explicit the links between different disciplinary fields in the context of environment and sustainability. This interdisciplinarity is reflected in the course aims, which are:

• To understand how our knowledge of, and responses to, contemporary global environmental concerns are shaped by media, culture, science and politics.

• To equip students with the ability to evaluate a range of practices, methods and theoretical approaches found within environment and media studies.

• To support students to engage actively with key aspects of global environmental change, sustainable and community development to promote positive change.

• To enable students to pursue employment in a range of environment and media related industries and professions.

The primary basis of the course is to promote understandings of, and approaches to, the environment as the complex interplay between the human, the physical and the socio-political. This is done through particular modules, and by bringing modules together within the structure of the degree. The experience of working with colleagues in different disciplines has been exciting in terms of identifying common interests and concerns, as well as creating productive differences. These students bring different critical perspectives to seminar discussions, and their coursework tends to draw upon a wider range of research from across a number of disciplines. The support of the University in the creation of this degree programme has been vital to its success.

Media Studies and the environment: possible ways forward
The changing context of higher education means that universities need to play a key role in the promotion and education of sustainability. Understanding the possibilities and limitations for student engagement is crucial, particularly for subject areas such as Media Studies, which has been slower to engage with these issues, but is now well placed to take an important lead. To conclude, I’d like to offer some possible ways forward for placing environment and sustainability as central to our field:

• Incorporate discussion of environmental issues and sustainability within modules, either explicitly or implicitly – for example, through news, documentary, citizen journalism, consumption, social media.

• Encourage interdisciplinary teaching and research – bring different sets of students together to create a productive dialogue.

• Share good teaching practices – create shared electronic resource of teaching examples/experiences.

• Encourage self-reflexive practices – for students and ourselves as academics/practitioners.

In doing so, we can help to turn the question around – ‘What hasn’t the environment got to do with Media Studies?’

Biography
Julie Doyle is a Principal Lecturer in Media Studies in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Brighton, where she is Assistant Course Leader for BA (Hons.) Environment and Media Studies and Course Leader for MA Creative Media. She is a co-founder and vice-chair of ECREA’s Science and Environment Communication Section and is on the founding Board of Directors of the International Environmental Communication Association (IECA). Her forthcoming book, Mediating Climate Change (Ashgate, 2011), is published in August.