Or rather: Why has no research investigated the news coverage or portrayal of plastic pollution in the media yet?
I am currently working on my master thesis in the field of journalism and communication studies and throughout my research I could not find one single research/academic article/published dissertation that deals with the news coverage or portrayal of plastic pollution in the media.
The background of my research:
Since environmental campaigns, documentaries like Blue Planet II and the mass media’s attention on plastic pollution have led to considerable interest in individual action to reduce plastic, the media frequently provides its consumers with practical and quickly realisable solutions for plastic pollution or suggestions for lifestyle changes. Yet, little do people know about the real scale and the depths of the problem, although scientists know of plastic’s disastrous effects on the environment and there is enough credible research that backs up the claims.
All past researches extensively focused on climate change as the major environmental threat, even though plastic pollution is an equally pressing issue.
Why is that the case? Or have I missed something important in my research?
I am very grateful for your opinion on the matter or a lead.
Dear Desirre,
these articles might be of interest to you:
Henderson, L., & Hilton, S. (2018). The media and public health: Where next for critical analysis? Critical Public Health, 28(4), 373–376. https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2018.1482663
Seelig, M. I. (2019). Popularizing the environment in modern media. The Communication Review, 22(1), 45–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2019.1569449
Thompson-Saud, G., Gelcich, S., & Barraza, J. (2018). Marine environmental issues in the mass media: Insights from television, newspaper and internet searches in Chile. Ocean & Coastal Management, 165, 154–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2018.08.015
Völker, C., Kramm, J., & Wagner, M. (2019). On the Creation of Risk: Framing of Microplastics Risks in Science and Media. Global Challenges, 1900010. https://doi.org/10.1002/gch2.201900010
Please go through following article, must be helpful to you
Article Plastic pollution and potential solutions
Not any that I know of. But this would be quite an interesting research study in Kenya, given the recent banning of the use of plastic bags.
may be useful.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.4161/sgtp.22289?needAccess=true
Article The environmental costs of the global digital economy in Asi...
Job Mwaura I agree. It is an interesting research study that can be conducted in many parts of the world (and in comparisons) as the past two years more and more countries and cities ban the use of plastic bags or single-use plastic items; and I still can't believe that apparently there hasn't been any/not much research done around that topic yet. I hope I can expand my research if everything goes well.
Amila Abeynayaka Thanks a lot, the links were useful indeed!
These links should be also very helpful. They provide a global overview of plastic pollution and not only that
https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution
https://ourworldindata.org/faq-on-plastics
Desiree Schneider , my pleasure. I used Scopus search;
"Plastic" for the abstract, title, search and "Media" for source title (so it refine the journal titles with word "media".
there can be many journals you know. If you change the source title names according to the journal names, you can find more research publications. (I am not a media expert so my knowledge on Journalism related journal names is minimum).
Look at this
https://www.restco.ca/Plastic_Pollution_Media_Coverage.shtml
Amila Abeynayaka that's a good advice, thanks again. I already searched some databases but haven't tried the refined search in Scopus search yet.
Eleonora Wcisło Our Wold in Data is such a great site. I already drew some information from those sites, that is very reassuring, thank you.
You will find interesting opinions from some scientists in these 3 papers (maybe there are more...):
"Microplastics in the environment: Much ado about nothing? A debate" : https://peerj.com/preprints/26507
"Stressor Exposures Determine Risk: So, Why Do Fellow Scientists Continue To Focus on Superficial Microplastics Risk?" : Article Stressor Exposures Determine Risk: So, Why Do Fellow Scienti...
"Viewpoint – Ocean plastic pollution: A convenient but distracting truth?" : Article Viewpoint – Ocean plastic pollution: A convenient but distra...
Lata Soccalingame Thank you, that is valuable! I have only known the third of the three papers so far.
Desiree Schneider do you find interesting to compare what is the position of plastic industry (big companies, small ones, federation...), of the non profit organisations (wwf, surfrider...), governments and mass media ? I'm not used to to your discipline but I'm really interested in your topic :-) you can also check on the report "voice for the ocean" by the non-profit Surfrider (it's the results of questions asked to 7000 european citizens about ocean pollution), the results are quite surprising to me but maybe not for you, I didn't really study the relevance of this study...
Lata Soccalingame Yes, I would definitely find that interesting to compare their communication on the topic! But I honestly would not know how to approach it by know as it is very hard to compare those different institutions/organisations taking into consideration their intentions, agendas, external influences etc. Would have to think of a suitable framework for that which would go beyond the scope of my master thesis' research at the moment. That's definitely something I can picture looking into after finishing my current project. Thanks for the new thoughts!
Dear Desirre,
these articles might be of interest to you:
Henderson, L., & Hilton, S. (2018). The media and public health: Where next for critical analysis? Critical Public Health, 28(4), 373–376. https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2018.1482663
Seelig, M. I. (2019). Popularizing the environment in modern media. The Communication Review, 22(1), 45–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2019.1569449
Thompson-Saud, G., Gelcich, S., & Barraza, J. (2018). Marine environmental issues in the mass media: Insights from television, newspaper and internet searches in Chile. Ocean & Coastal Management, 165, 154–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2018.08.015
Völker, C., Kramm, J., & Wagner, M. (2019). On the Creation of Risk: Framing of Microplastics Risks in Science and Media. Global Challenges, 1900010. https://doi.org/10.1002/gch2.201900010
Cornelia Brantner thank you so much for sharing! Those three papers are great!
I came across an article in Inscope titled:
‘Plastic: Not so fantastic.’ Hope this helps- it had no author though an academic was photographed at the end and his name given. This reserch article is quite disturbing about microplastics.
Janet Elizabeth Roden can you share a link of this article ? thanks
Sorry..I received this a while ago and have a printed copy whihc I could attach if you send me an email
Dear Desirre,
the articles might be of interest to you:
Article Current research trends on plastic pollution and ecological ...
Yes, it is an interesting topic for scientific research. Recently, there have been many articles about environmental pollution by plastic waste. In the media, this problem also appears more and more often, but it is treated differently in individual countries. This is determined by many factors related to public awareness of the problem, the level of plastic pollution, harmfulness to health and other negative effects caused by these plastic waste, the development of industry and services based on plastic materials. In the European Union, this problem has also been noticed at the level of policy and changes in legal regulations. An example is the introduction of regulations by the European Parliament according to which plastic in packaging can be used until 2021 and after 2021 it is to be replaced by biodegradable materials. This is an example of significant changes in the approach to the problem of environmental pollution with plastic waste. These types of issues are widely commented and described in the media but to varying degrees in individual countries.
Best wishes
Cafer Turkmen Thank you for the recommendation, that's some very interesting literature!
Have you found this paper?
Preprint Microplastics in the environment: much ado about nothing? A debate
Plastic pollution in the environment has been around since the 1980ies and we tried to fight it at school already...
A couple of factors now make it come back with a hype: - Social media easily are spreading pictures of wildlife and plastic...
- Environmental organizations such as WWF take the topic up again and make campaigns out of it...
- Media coverage has steppted in possibly because they are more aware on the destruction of your environment (climate, waters, soil...)
- Scince know has produced an relyable dataset on the dispersal of microplastics in the environment and nutritions chainds from seefood into human beings...
- For the first time studies about the human uptake of microplastic have been published and discussed widely...
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