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The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
REPRESENTATION OF ENVIRONMENTALISTS IN MEDIA: AN EVALUATION
ON STEREOTYPES OF ENVIRONMENTALIST
Introduction
Onur Bekiroğlu, Research Assistant
Anadolu Universitesi Yunus EmreKampusu Medya Merkezi Binasi Tepebasi Eskisehir
Turkey
Şule Yüksel Özmen Research Assistant
Anadolu Universitesi Yunus EmreKampusu Medya Merkezi Binasi Tepebasi Eskisehir
Turkey
In the historical process, ever since environmental problems have begun coming to the fore,
studies that deal with environmental problems, environment-human relations and the
environment-industry-economy connection, have shown a wide variety in their problem
descriptions, solution suggestions and approaches. Within this spectrum, environmentalist
movements play a significant role in their contribution to the solution or discernment of
environmental problems. Accelerating along with the youth movements of 1950s,
environmental movements are approached from two dimensions: ideology and action. As an
ideology, environmentalism is a belief system containing the possibility of changing the
relations between human and environment (Harper, 1996: 293), while its action aspect
includes statements towards living with a holistic approach in the natural environment (Tuna,
2006: 1995). To express it in a more concrete way, the movement being conceptualized as the
“Greens” contains the ideological aspect of environmentalism, while the action aspect is
brought to realization by organizing against any situation likely to harm environment, and
making protest demonstrations.
In Turkey’s case, environmentalism is not developed sufficiently. Tuna (2006: 150) suggests
that Turkish society is not ready enough to commit, attempt or act for the solution of
environmental problems and that they more seesaw in their preferences between socioeconomic
development and environmental concerns. When they have to make a selection,
their attitude leans towards economic advancement.
On how the environmental movement has evolved in Turkey, Atauz (1994) argues that the
non-governmental organizations consisting of young, decisive and swift youths were at first
promising and believed to contribute to the environment but that this process did not last long
and swerved to another way. This other way mentioned by Atauz is formulated as the
officialization of the environmentalist movement. The officialization of the environmentalist
moment, in turn, indicates a situation where parties carry the subject of environment to their
posters, companies use this subject as a marketing item and so the environment itself becomes
a “market.” In this context, current environmentalist movement might be defined in the
following way (Atauz, 1994):
Today, those appearing on the ‘environmentalism arena’ are a very widespread but empty,
ineffective and useless official sector, a civil environmentalist movement which prefers to be
related to the first group and whose technicist tendency is dominating in some of its parts
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