Description
Most of what we understand about the environment', we know through the media, broadly defined, and related communication processes. Indeed, such processes have played a vital role in defining the environment' as a crucial concept, and in bringing environmental issues and problems to public and political attention. Thus, at least since the emergence and rise of the modern environmental movement in the 1960s, the mass media have been a central public arena for publicizing environmental issues and for contesting claims, arguments, and opinions about our use and abuse of the environment. (Moreover, the learned editor of this new Routledge collection avers, this applies not only to our beliefs and knowledge about those aspects of the environment which are regarded as problems or issues for public and political concern, but extends much deeper to the very ways in which weas individuals, cultures, and societiesview, perceive, value, and relate to our environment and nature generally.)
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