(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
environmental problems. Therefore, this study mentioned the contribution of mass media
coverage of environmental issues to engineering works, especially to Environmental
Engineering. The types and scopes of the programs affect the public awareness, acceptance
and involvement in engineering works. The contribution of the specially prepared television
programs to these were investigated and discussed on “NTV Green Screen” which is a private
national Turkish broadcasting company.
1.1 Engineering Perspective of Environmental Issues
The main mission of the engineering is to generate, design and apply the technical solutions to
various problems related to their specialization. The main consideration is to solve the
problem with the easiest and the chapest way. In other words, engineering requires an
extensive feasibility study. In general the engineering works and solutions are seen only by
interested parties, not by the whole public. But in case of environmental issues, the
engineering work, whether or not it is seen by the public, should be known, accepted and kept
by everybody. Otherwise the results affect them adversely. For example, the sewerage system
design is a voluminous work starting from the land survey to the on-site construction of the
pipeline. At the end of the work, when the trenches are closed and roads are reconstructed,
nobody see the system and nobody remember/know how much work has been done. In this
case, public has nothing to do during the project, but awareness and attitude is required to
keep the system. Otherwise the system will not serve them and what happens if the sewereage
accumulate on the street?
Engineers are unable to proclaim their project or their solutions against any problem to large
masses. Especially in Environmental Engineering, this become a much more complicated
difficulty because of the prejudice about the job and the misunderstanding of the contents of
the job. Prejudice arise from the fright that Environmental Engineers always require treatment
of your waste and so cause high costs. This unlucky approach is mainly due to the lack of
knowledge about the real structure of the job. Environmental Engineering does not always
produce costly solutions, but the job can not introduce itself sufficiently. The second problem
is about the misunderstanding of the job. Many parties of the public think the job as if it is
related to the physical environment like trees, flowers, gardens, insects etc. Additionally the
job is confused with some other jobs like city and urban planning, landscape architecture etc.
Actually Environmental Engineering deals with the protection of natural resources, air, water,
soil, minerals, earth; and this protection process includes the analysis, design and application
of the technological solutions. This combination adds another important work to the job:
Environmental Management in which environmental impact assessment take a big part. One
of the key steps in environmental impact assessment is the public participation. Its procedure
starts with the announcement throguh newspapers, local televisions etc.
Environmental Engineering works include two fundamental engineering approaches:
preventing the pollution before it is generated, and solving the pollution problem after it is
arised. Although the first one is preferred by the engineers, in almost all developing and
under-developed countries the general tendency is as the solution of pollution after generation.
Neither politicians nor public tend to pollution prevention unless they have any idea about the
results of that pollution. They are not willing to pay before seeing the threat of the problem.
This conflict makes engineers unable to apply the pollution prevention approach.
473