I. ANNE MARIE TODD, CARTOON AND ENVIRONMENT, THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK ON ENVIRONMENT AND COMMUNICATION, ROUTLEDGE PUBLICATION: LONDON AND NEW YORK, (2015)
Anne Marie Todd in this article ‘Cartoon and Environment’ refers to the medium of cartoons and animation to focus on ways in which they ‘construct and contest environmental issues’. According to her “cartoons are a beloved and enduring form of popular culture”. The cartoon referred to in the article is both comic and televisual animation. Popular cultures as that of cartoon play an important role as to how some people communicate with the situations around them.
“Cartoons offer significant environmental messages through character studies, comic corrective, and crisis response.” Many newspapers, for instance, carry out editorial cartoons, and now it has taken over the internet too. TheLorax animation movie narrates the idea of species of flower getting extinct and ways in which people’s greed has taken over the forests. “Marshal McLuhan offers cartoons as an example of “cool media”-those that provide little information, requiring viewers to fill in details”. Cartoon as a medium stands out because of the wide variety of audience and participation that it encourages. Cartoon parody has also become a medium which translates social messages, the parody of The Matrix called ‘ The Matrix’ by Dylan Wolfe shows horrors of factory farming in a comical satire.“ The Matrix” is significant for its dynamic use of emerging technology, minimal production cost, and successful dissemination.”
Cartoons are not a realistic portrayal of life, but they transmit critical and informative ideas in multiple layers. The cartoon environment discourse is very influential, Captain Planet, for instance, is an environmental superhero to fight planets destruction. Green Ninja6, another such cartoon is a climate-change superhero who reduces ‘individuals’ footprints to fight global warming. “These hero narratives proclaim that individuals have the power to solve the environmental crisis”. These work as tools that provoke ‘charitable self-reflection’.
This article is very interesting and relevant to today’s environmental crisis and the ways in which various outreach programmes are being disseminated through animation and cartoons as it was discussed in the class. The Simpsons, South Park are a few shows that I have watched that reflect on various issues related to the environment too. Apocalyptic visions become a part of the cartoon in the environmental discourse which also critiques the issues of over-consumption and consumer lifestyle.
II. SHARON M.FRIEDMAN, THE CHANGING FACE OF ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALISM IN THE UNITED STATES THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK ON ENVIRONMENT AND COMMUNICATION, ROUTLEDGE PUBLICATION: LONDON AND NEW YORK, (2015)
Sharon traces the growth of environmental journalism in the United States. Environmental journalism which started in the 1960s has taken varied forms through different media structures, ownership histories and styles. The paper extensively deals with environmental coverage through journalism as a medium. “For years, newspapers and magazines were the mainstays of environmental journalism in the United States, with less emphasis on television and radio. Now, online media publications, blogs, Twitter feeds, YouTube videos and Facebook pages about environmental issues—with global reaches—are produced not only by reporters but also by nonprofit organizations, government and industry groups, and private individuals.” The mass media and internet coverage have tremendously enhanced the questions related to the environment through ‘a constant stream of language and images derived from popular culture’.
Incidents like the Santa Barbara Oil Spill, Ohio’s Cuyahoga River fire in 1969 led to a lot of media attention to environmental incidents. “The first Earth Day and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, and the passage of major environmental laws several years later focused even more public attention on environmental concerns, which did not escape the nation’s media.” Environmental ‘beat’ reporting became a trend with the coming of
National Geographic Magazines, eventually, the New York Times also started with specialized environmental reporting. “According to a study by William Witt of the University of Wisconsin in 1972–1973, environmental reporters felt that their beat was inadequately covered with not enough staff, time and space and that there was too much concentration on environmental problems, crisis reporting and sensationalism. They also complained about their editors’ lack of interest in following the complexities and development of most environmental issues.”
The reporting on environmental issues also shrunk during the 1990s, downsizing became a norm for many newsrooms due to declining profit, troubled U.S. Economy and also due to the rise of the internet, digital and social media. In 2004 ‘specialty beat reporters were particularly vulnerable. To attract more readers and viewers, the media began to emphasize more local reporting, features about living and style, and celebrity news.’ Environmental journalists were victims of this downsizing, in 2008 CNN ‘cut its science, technology and environmental news staff and six executive producers.’ The New York Times also used mainstreaming as a reason to shut down its three-year-old environmental desk, or “pod,” in January 2013, redistributing its two editors and seven reporters. These reporters, who had exclusively covered the environment, comprised the largest single environmental staff of any daily U.S. newspapers. From 2014 certain changes were made in innovating the traditional ways of environmental reporting, combining the audio, video and print together led to further enhancement. Offline magazines came online, and at least such magazines (The Environment Magazine, Earth First, National Geographic, Mother Earth News, World Watch and Yes!) and journals on the issues of environment went on to build a readership base amongst many.
This article is important as it describes phases of environmental journalism in particular. In the age of the Internet and social media, and with the growing concern about climate change ‘with its multitude of environmental and health impacts, more and better environmental coverage could help people seek solutions to meet the challenges ahead.’ The earlier journalism was more content-oriented rather than providing solutions for environmental problems. But now people concerned about the environment write extensively well-researched blogs (Grist, The cleanest line, YaleEnvironment 360, BBC Earth blog and many), “along with blogs, use of social media to report breaking disaster stories have already had an impact on reporting strategies.” There are many challenges that come with environmental journalism, especially in what ways does the public be made aware of these problems and also about the authenticity of research.
III. TAMARA SHEPHERD, GENDERING THE COMMODITY AUDIENCE IN SOCIAL MEDIA, THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO MEDIA AND GENDER, ROUTLEDGE PRESS: LONDON AND NEW YORK, (2014)
Tamara Shepherd’s work focusses on the relevance of understanding the commodification and gender in social media. She looks at the feminist political economy and how “the political economy tradition of studying communications and the media attends to the impact of economic structures such as media ownership, government policy, and advertising models on communication as a political and social instrument of power.” It is here that gendered identities are created.
The process of data-mining and collection of personal information constructed profiles of particular user groups, including gendered user groups, so that they may be targeted more precisely by advertisers. Assessment of advertisements also became a way to determine the future of consumer behaviour in selecting products. “Mechanisms for collecting information about users, such as cookies, flash cookies, beacons, log files, and deep packet inspection, to name a few, inherently involve packaging the data collected so that it can be exchanged at market value.” ‘Online Profiling’ becomes key for a gendered narrative on social media platforms. “Lifestyles of consumption are gendered through the ways that programming targets certain audiences, where soap operas offer the quintessential example of programming that was developed as a vehicle for soap ads targeted toward “housewives”. Shepherd also mentions how liking a Facebook friend’s baby photos can lead to targeted ads for baby-related products, especially for women Facebook users who are listed as “married”. This further establishes certain heteronormative gender roles within society.
The data about women are classified by different names like “Soccer Moms,” “Green Consumers,” and “Sports Fans” which was studied by Datalogix. “The gendered commodity audience continues to be a productive framework for attending to ideological dimensions of the political economy of communication.”
This article was important due to the report that I read about Facebook on BBC where the mother of a stillborn child Gillian Brockell posted a message on twitter, facebook, Instagram about how she was still shown advertisements related to baby-related products because at one point she has searched for something in this regard. ‘ She later added that even after she had taken the suggested measure of switching off the ‘parenting advertisements’, she was still shown an advert that suggested she consider adoption, which was inappropriate given the circumstances’. Where should such social media commodification draw a line in order to grasp the emotions of women and understand their trauma becomes really significant.
IV. KAREN ROSS, A NICE BIT OF SKIRT AND THE TALKING HEAD: SEX, POLITICS, AND NEWS, THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO MEDIA AND GENDER, ROUTLEDGE PRESS: LONDON AND NEW YORK, (2014)
The paper focuses on ways in which female politicians are portrayed by the media in particular. Karen Ross herself in the early 1990s stood as the Labour candidate in local ward elections, the news coverage about her centred around haircut, the shoes she wore and the age. The news media reports women politicians in a certain way, “their personal lives came under intense scrutiny, every detail examined for signs of deviancy or scandal, especially if they were unmarried or childfree” Karen writes “for women to achieve the oxygen of media publicity is already more difficult.” Apart from how they are shown, at times, they stand absent from political discourse over the news what Tuchman’s writes as ‘symbolic annihilation’ of political women who are absent from the news agenda. Angela Merkel stunned the nation by wearing a deep blue evening dress with cleavage and pearls to an opera in Oslo in 2008. Daily mail reported the photo with a caption ‘Weapons of Mass Distraction: German Chancellor Angela Merkel shows off plunging neckline’. Another was a report on Virginia Raggi, the mayor of Rome who was merely written off by media about her looks. “If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle,” Hillary Clinton quipped in 1995 when she was the first lady and had recently graduated out of headbands.” Women politicians grab headlines by merely on their looks or other feminine behaviours. “The use of specific naming strategies also works to undermine women’s credibility.
This was perfectly captured by the soubriquet of “Blair’s Babes” given to the 101 Labour women who were elected as MPs in the 1997 British general election. The Mirror newspaper is credited with having originally coined the phrase in relation to several women celebrities who were planning to vote Labour in the 1997 election. The label was subsequently used to caption the photo of a victorious Tony Blair surrounded by “his” women.” Their emotions are also downplayed and they are constantly attached to some powerful men politicians to gain credibility. “Women politicians remain obstinately “othered” by media discourse. They still require the prefix “woman” to mark them out as different from the traditional (male) politician. Women are still undermined by journalists’ continuing fascination with their coiffure, couture, and conjugal relations, and still ignored for their policy position.”
The rationale to select the article was to assess the ways in which women politicians are depicted. For example, if one goes on to talk about Jayalalitha, the first thing people comment upon are the numbers of saree and footwear she had. A headline of one of the articles in The Hindu Business Line says “ Six yards that defined her life and career.”28 Breastfeeding in parliament had become such a piece of big news, how it would violate the decorum of the Parliament or be a distraction for others. Another news was about New Zealand’s Prime Minister. Jessica Arden, and that she was the only women in 30 years to have a baby while in office. These things can really make one think how women politicians life is so complex and ways in which media narrate their stories.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ross, Karen. ‘A nice bit of skirt and talking head: Sex, politics, and news’, The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender, ed. Cynthia Carter, Linda Steiner and Lisa McLaughlin, Routledge Press: London and New York, (2014).
Karni, Annie. ‘Hillary’s Hair: She is in on the joke’, Politico, (2015), https://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/hillary-clinton-hair-118381 .
Shepherd, Tamara. ‘Gendering the commodity audience in Social Media’, The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender, ed. Cynthia Carter, Linda Steiner and Lisa McLaughlin, Routledge Press: London and New York, (2014).
M. Friedman, Sharon. ‘The Changing face of Environmental journalism in the United States’, The Routledge Handbook on Environment and Communication, ed Anders Hansen and Robert Cox, Routledge Press: London and New York, (2015).
Marie Todd, Anne. ‘Cartoon and Environment’, The Routledge Handbook on Environment and Communication, ed Anders Hansen and Robert Cox, Routledge Press: London and New York, (2015).
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