Critical practice and the public pedagogy of environmental and conservation media

Natural History filmmaking has a long history but the generic boundaries between it and environmental and conservation filmmaking are blurred. Nature, environment and animal imagery has been a mainstay of television, campaigning organisations and conservation bodies from Greenpeace to the Sierra Club, with vibrant images being used effectively on posters, leaflets and postcards, and in coffee table books, media releases, short films and viral emails to educate and inform the general public. However, critics suggest that wildlife film and photography frequently convey a false image of the state of the world’s flora and fauna. The environmental educator David Orr once remarked that all education is environmental education, and it is possible to see all image-based communication in the same way. The Media, Animal Conservation and Environmental Education has contributions from filmmakers, photographers, researchers and academics from across the globe. It explores the various ways in which film, television and video are, and can be, used by conservationists and educators to encourage both a greater awareness of environmental and conservation issues, and practical action designed to help endangered species. This book is based on a special issue of the journal Environmental Education Research.

Media presentation and public understanding of stem cells and stem cell research in Hungary

This paper reports on a research project which examined media coverage and audience perceptions of stem cells and stem cell research in Hungary, using focus groups and a media analysis. A background study was also conducted on the Hungarian legal, social and political situation linked to stem cell research, treatment and storage. Our data shows how stem cell research/treatments were framed by the focus group members in terms of medical results/cures and human interest stories – mirroring the dominant frames utilized by the Hungarian press. The spontaneous discourse on stem cells in the groups involved a non-political and non-controversial understanding – also echoing the dominant presentation of the media. Comparing our results with those of a UK study, we found that although there are some similarities, UK and Hungarian focus group participants framed the issue of stem cell research differently in many respects – and these differences often echoed the divergences of the media coverage in the two countries. We conclude by arguing against approaches which attribute only negligible influence to the media – especially in the case of complex scientific topics and when the dominant information source for the public is the media.

Multi-impurity adsorption model for modeling crystal purity and shape evolution during crystallization processes in impure media

Peer reviewed

Judy Collins with Jill Godmilow at Media conference

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Flo Kennedy at Mama Media demonstration

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Media demonstration for pro-abortion

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Journalist Nora Ephron at More Media conference

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Lee Walker, media coordinator at NY NOW, speaks at the Sexism and the Media workshop at the "Sexism in the Schools" conference

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Jan Crawford of NOW moderates a workshop in sexism in the media at the "Sexism in the Schools" conference

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Future is female (Mama Media demonstration)

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

More Media conference (Liebling conference)

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Media women at the Miami Democratic National Convention

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

More Media conference (Liebling conference) with Bella Abzug

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Susan Kleckner (left), filmmaker with multi-media artist Alida Walsh (right) at Cerridwen Salon in New York

: Title and date provided by Freda Leinwand.

No right to sext? A critical examination of media and legal debates about teenage girls' sexual agency in the digital age

Advances in digital photography and distribution technologies enable many people to produce and distribute images of their sex acts. When teenagers do this, the photos and videos they create can be legally classified as child pornography since the law makes no exception for youth who create sexually explicit images of themselves. The dominant discussions about teenage girls producing sexually explicit media (including sexting) are profoundly unproductive: (1) they blame teenage girls for creating private images that another person later maliciously distributed and (2) they fail to respect—or even discuss—teenagers’ rights to freedom of expression. Cell phones and the internet make producing and distributing images extremely easy, which provide widely accessible venues for both consensual sexual expression between partners and for sexual harassment. Dominant understandings view sexting as a troubling teenage trend created through the combination of camera phones and adolescent hormones and impulsivity, but this view often conflates consensual sexting between partners with the malicious distribution of a person’s private image as essentially equivalent behaviors. In this project, I ask: What is the role of assumptions about teen girls’ sexual agency in these problematic understandings of sexting that blame victims and deny teenagers’ rights? In contrast to the popular media panic about online predators and the familiar accusation that youth are wasting their leisure time by using digital media, some people champion the internet as a democratic space that offers young people the opportunity to explore identities and develop social and communication skills. Yet, when teen girls’ sexuality enters this conversation, all this debate and discussion narrows to a problematic consensus. The optimists about adolescents and technology fall silent, and the argument that media production is inherently empowering for girls does not seem to apply to a girl who produces a sexually explicit image of herself. Instead, feminist, popular, and legal commentaries assert that she is necessarily a victim: of a “sexualized” mass media, pressure from her male peers, digital technology, her brain structures or hormones, or her own low self-esteem and misplaced desire for attention. Why and how are teenage girls’ sexual choices produced as evidence of their failure or success in achieving Western liberal ideals of self-esteem, resistance, and agency? Since mass media and policy reactions to sexting have so far been overwhelmingly sexist and counter-productive, it is crucial to interrogate the concepts and assumptions that characterize mainstream understandings of sexting. I argue that the common sense that is co-produced by law and mass media underlies the problematic legal and policy responses to sexting. Analyzing a range of nonfiction texts including newspaper articles, talk shows, press releases, public service announcements, websites, legislative debates, and legal documents, I investigate gendered, racialized, age-based, and technologically determinist common sense assumptions about teenage girls’ sexual agency. I examine the consensus and continuities that exist between news, nonfiction mass media, policy, institutions, and law, and describe the limits of their debates. I find that this early 21st century post-feminist girl-power moment not only demands that girls live up to gendered sexual ideals but also insists that actively choosing to follow these norms is the only way to exercise sexual agency. This is the first study to date examining the relationship of conventional wisdom about digital media and teenage girls’ sexuality to both policy and mass media.