Sumantra Maitra

Media Coverage of Environmental Issue: a Research Project Sumantra Maitra

"MEDIA COVERAGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE" is a thesis done as a project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for Master of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communication of Sikkim Manipal University, India. It was done as a topic, which is timely, relevant, and necessary. The project is something that everyone can relate to, it is a problem which everyone faces in one way or another directly or indirectly, its everybody's problem and only everybody can solve it. While it is uncertain whether the mass media promotes environmental apathy or action, it is clear that the media play an important role in the social construction of environmental concern. To better understand public perceptions of environmental problems it is important to study how individual attitudes are structured and the negotiation of meaning of environmental messages in the media. This paper reviews the literature on the interpretation of environmental messages in the media and proposes a research method to unravel the social construction of environmental concern.