Introduction
Theorists in the field of media studies turned their focus to youth subcultures as communities centered on creating, sharing and negotiating new identities. Creative processes analyzed and discussed shed light on the key role of symbolic identities as means and practice in the generation and constant (re)formation of personal and communal response to environmental changes. Although human identity substantially contributes to the understanding of human interaction with his surrounding environment, it is perhaps critical to equally examine the effects of the environment in shaping new human identities and how these are reported in the media. This paper on the one hand examines media representation of identities and how these shape the environment in which they (identity) live and operate; and on the other, media representation of the environment and how such representations eventually shape out human identities.
Media and identity
Contemporarily, the construction of personal identity can be seen to be somewhat problematic and difficult. Youth particularly are surrounded by influential imagery, especially that of popular media. Michel Certeau argues that, it is no longer possible for an identity to be constructed merely by community small community values or only influenced by family.[1] Nowadays, arguably everything concerning human live is seen to be ‘media-saturated’.[2] Therefore, it is obvious that in constructing an identity young people would make use of imagery derived from the popular media. For instance, unlike two decades a day, today, it is common for young children to have their own television and music systems in their bedrooms whilst also having easy and frequent access to magazines especially aimed at child and/or teenager ‘developing’. These young people also have a way of accessing the Internet be it at school, at home and nowadays on their cell phones. However, it is also fair to state that in some instances the freedom of exploring the web could be limited depending on the choice of the parents or teachers, or just unavailable depending on where one lives. So, if young people have such frequent access and an interest in the media, it is fair to say that their behaviour and their sense of self will be influenced to some degree by what they see, read, hear or discover for themselves. Such an influence transgresses into their behaviour or/and dressing. Some dress or behave in tune to the kind of music or soaps they listen to, or watch. These are all aspects which go towards constructing a person’s own personal identity.
By way of understanding how identity affects the environment, firstly, it is important to establish what constitutes an identity, especially in young people. The Collins Gem English Dictionary (1991) defines identity as the “state of being a specified person or thing: individuality or personality”
This suggests that an identity is something that occurs to a person, like a ‘state’ of drunkenness. However, I believe that identity is something that is constructed over a period of time and can constantly be updated or changed completely. Children can be seen to change their identities throughout puberty and often have different identities at the age of 13 or 18 to when they hit their early 20s to their mid 20s. Throughout this period, they will be in contact with many different influences ranging from older brothers and sisters, the environment, what is deemed to be cool in school to popular imagery derived from the media such as the dress of the season as not too long ago it was fashionable for city youth to wear the ama kipkip, a tee-shirt (clothing) label which surfaced in Johannesburg in summer 2009. Also, as South Africa turned Yellow because of the emblematic national support for Bafana Bafana during the 2010 soccer world cup, it was fashionable to possess a Bafana soccer jersey and wear same on soccer Friday—a tag which had been placed on Fridays leading up to the World cup. This clearly shows that young people will actively make use of imagery available to them when they are constructing their identities—Bafana Bafana fans.
Constructing an identity in today’s media-saturated world is not an easy task. With the multiple examples of identity found in the mass media it is clear that some people may have difficulty distinguishing between individual life style and similar life styles or collective human traits ensuing from media transformation.
The environment also adds pressure on young children when constructing their identities as there are certain expectations presented by the environment—some of which could be climatic, or health-related. Individuals who live in mosquito infested environments tend to re-design their dressing to mitigate the somewhat stinking pinh of a mosquito. Thus it would be absurd to find people in sleeveless wears at night where they run a risk of mosquito bites and the propensity of contracting malaria which is injected into the human red blood cells by the mosquito’s mandible. This prompted Brown to opine that:
A teenager does not experience the angst of constructing a self in a void but rather in the middle of a world of societal expectations and pressures that require public performances to "keep face" and, in some instances, to maintain physical and emotional safety. (Brown et al. 1994, 814).
Within this idea, it is important to remember that an identity is not a fixed thing and it is just as difficult maintaining one as it is constructing one in the first place.
Mass media provides a wide-ranging source of cultural opinions and standards to young people as well as differing examples of identity. Young people are able to look at these and decide which they find most appealing and also to what they would like to aspire to be. The meanings gathered from the media are not often final but are open to reshaping and refashioning to suit an individual’s personal needs and consequently, identity. To this, Markus & Nurius said:
[humans]…use media and the cultural insights provided by them to see both who they might be and how others have constructed or reconstructed themselves… individual adolescents…struggle with the dilemma of living out all the "possible selves" (Markus & Nurius, 1986).
When considering how much time adolescents are in contact with the popular media, be it television, magazines, advertising, music, cell phone or the Internet, it is clear to see that it is bound to have a marked effect on an individual’s construction of their identity. This is especially the case when the medium itself is concerned with the idea of identity and the self; self-preservation, self-understanding and self-celebration.
In the last two decades (1990—2010), popular media has experienced a lot of technological expansions, which in turn has had an immense impact on the construction of identity. As Debra Grodin and Thomas R. Lindlof state:
With a simple flip of the television channel or radio station, or a turn of the newspaper or magazine page, we have at our disposal an enormous array of possible identity models. (Grodin & Lindlof 1996)
These models provided by the television, radio and the Internet have not before now been available for use to young people growing up. Nowadays, it is quite common for children when they come home from school to switch on the television and watch the programmes especially designed for them. Demonstrative examples are Generations and Rhythm City which are long running soaps about the youth and their interactive daily life in urban South Africa. These two soaps comprehensively depict the trials and tribulations of youth who engineer beautiful ideas as in the case of Lungile of Rymthm City but a the wealthier can pirate his ideas and use their wealth to suppress his ingenuity. Matters even get worst where because of his obedience to his father, some of his projects get run-over because the father doesn’t see their success in the same way as this urban South African youth who is trying his hand on the music production industry. This sort of programme shows how a well knit family founded on values of respect of the elders, and encouragement of youth as with Sbu’s father Miles, navigate the challenges of a cruel and morality-scare South African society where Mile’s wife Lucila soon elopes with her lover after (David Genero), and abates the letter to misappropriate the music industry her ailing husband had invested in. It is therefore possible for anyone living in South Africa to identify with some of the traits depicted in these soaps. When I was around ten years old I was not allowed to watch late night E-TV movies, often pornographic in nature as my parents thought it put forward a bad example of how to behave in society. This suggests that they believed it would be possible for me to copy the behaviour portrayed on screen and use it in some way, somehow constructing my potential identity from aspects of the characters in the movies.
In the same vein, magazines can also have a great influence on the formation of an identity, not just in young people but with adults to an extent as well. For example, there are constant beatifications made about the portrayal of thin models in fashion magazines that apparently encourage young women to want to be as thin as the fashion models they see in such magazines. More so, adverts seen in magazines, on billboards, on television or even the internet and the imagery such advertising campaigns put forward can also be seen to influence a young person constructing their identity. This can be anything from the ‘correct’ dress design to buy, to which hair style or cosmetic their TV role model wears, or to mobile phone is the smallest and therefore most popular. The list is endless.
Furthermore, young people are also able to gain material to construct their identities from listening to music and especially when they pay close attention to the lyrics of songs. Sometimes, a young person is able to find a certain line of a song which completely sums up how they feel, and this can go towards making them feel more (in)secure in themselves and therefore enabling them to pursue a specific area of their personality further.
Similarly, the internet is an especially interesting medium for young people to use in the construct of their identities. Not only can they make use of the imagery derived from the internet, but also it provides a perfect backdrop for the presentation of the self, notably with personal home pages—facebook, blogs or customized email address. Constructing a personal page can therefore enable someone to put all the imagery they have derived from the popular media into practice. Chandler says—
“… constructing a personal home page can be seen as shaping not only the materials but also (in part through manipulating the various materials) one’s identity.” (Chandler 1998)
The relationship between media and identity is particularly important as not only does it interpret how various facets of the media define human behavior, but portrays how young people respond to such an interesting and wide ranging medium of media.It makes for an interesting case of cultural transfer because people are able to interact with others on the internet just as they could present their identities in real life and interact with others on a day to day basis. This facilitates a quick transferability and broadening of identities.
As mentioned above, young people choose to read magazines for a variety of reasons. Not only do the magazines reflect the interests of a certain age group but they are also a form of enjoyment. They contain varied topics, which interest young people as the articles are written on their level and such articles can be used for light reading and can be read over and over. Magazines have been popular for many years but in post cold war Africa have been increasingly popular with young people. Willis says they have been—
“… developing in tandem with the expansion of particular commodity markets, records, fashion, make-up and toiletries, targeted at the newly discovered affluent youth market.” (Willis 1990, 53)
Unlike newspapers, magazines are written on a somewhat one to one basis, and a person can exercise control over the magazine in what they choose to read. This is unlike newspapers whose subject matter is mainly the reporting on society and most often political haps which are distant from young people. The fact that magazines are often kept and referred back to is also important in the construction of an identity, especially when a young person may be looking to the magazine for (relationship or dressing) advice.
One of the most appealing tenets in popular teen magazines, especially those aimed at young girls is the image of the model. This in turn is linked to which clothes are fashionable at a particular time and what is deemed to be ‘wow’ to wear. Many young girls would look at these images as a source of inspiration as to what to wear and would think that they were inadequate to some extent if they could not wear those clothes or did not look like the models featured. For young women:
Figuring out how to dress their bodies requires that they learn a subtle symbolic system, and then decide which of its components fit with, express and develop in desirable ways their identity. (Willis 1990, 55)
By close study of a magazine entitled Cosmopolitan, published by Jane Raphaely & Associates (PTY) it is clear to see that thin models wearing fashionable clothes are always central to the magazine’s cover page. More so, it is clearer to see that the young models are obviously thin and portrayed to be happy especially when wearing pink. The color pink is emblematic as it tends to suggest that a reader wearing pink will equally be happy and content. Young people looking at these images before long wish to be more like the model pictured. They may take to wearing pink all the time, not only because it is a fashionable colour but also because they wish to be more like the model in the magazines. By doing this, a young lady is constructing her identity from imagery derived from the Cosmopolitan magazine.
Other features of popular teen magazines are exemplified in the Ebony. For example, there are the usual problem pages for young people to refer to for help with their personal problems or worries, which are considered to be of paramount importance when young people are constructing their identities:
The advice columns in magazines rend to be much read and provide [youth] with symbolic materials concerning their personal and family lives. They can also be much criticized and parodied in their symbolic work and creativity. (Willis 1990, 55)
There are also the usual star sign features, real life articles and posters of popular teenage male icons. Even a young person’s choice of whose picture they put on their bedroom wall reflects the popular media being utilised in the construction of their identities. Their personal preference for one famous person over another reflects what the owner of the poster looks for in life. If they chose a soccer star, for example, the individual may be admiring the skill and role played by that character in their particular team’s success. Posters are not just a means for making a bedroom a personal space as a great deal more can be read into them which Willis say:
“… stars are, to some extent, symbolic vehicles with which young women understand themselves more fully, even if, by doing so, they partly shape their personalities to fit the stars’ alleged preferences.” (Willis 1990, 57)
Consequently, for possessing popular teen magazines, young people make use of some of the freebies known to come with them. These freebies eventually become an attractive resource on offer to them in the construction of their own identities.
Just as the images on offer on magazines are open to wide interpretation, the same can be said of popular music. Popular music nowadays can be seen as a kind of theme-tune to young people’s lives as they are growing up. A song can always take you directly back to the moment you connect with, and this is especially the case for young people in the process of constructing their identities. Willis points out the importance of this point—
Popular music is always listened to within specific social settings and locations, and used as a background to any number of activities from courting and sexual encounters, dancing in clubs, to surviving in work, or defeating boredom in the home. (Willis 1990, 71)
Therefore, it can be said that music can be seen to permeate everything we do either during our youth or when we are older. Music is also a means of communication for some young people, which also goes towards the construction of an identity. For example, if adolescents are able to talk passionately about their favourite genre of music, they are able to share their own thoughts and feelings, which in turn reflects their personality type.
In conclusion it can be seen that the popular media permeates everything that we do. Consequently, the imagery in the media is bound to infiltrate into young people’s lives. This is especially the case when young people are in the process of constructing their identities. Through television, magazines, advertising, music and the Internet adolescents have a great deal of resources available to them in order for them to choose how they would like to present their ‘selves’. However, just as web pages are constantly seen to be 'under construction’, so can the identities of young people. These will change as their tastes in media change and develop. There is no such thing as one fixed identity; it is negotiable and is sometimes possible to have multiple identities. The self we present to our friends and family could be somewhat different from the self we would present on the Internet, for example. By using certain imagery portrayed in the media, be it slim fashion models, a character in a television drama or a lyric from a popular song, young people and even adults are able to construct an identity for themselves. This identity will allow them to fit in with the pressures placed on us by environment, yet allow them to still be fundamentally different from the next person.
Media and the Environment
Seasonal climatic fluctuations as those enunciated above (i.e. the weather which factors in the identity-design of what youth wear), and contemporary environmental challenges like climate change, global warming, animal poaching permeate the very material and discursive fabric of human life. Over time, mass media coverage has proven to be a key contributor—among a number of factors—that has stitched environmental science, governance, and human daily life together. The mass media has consecrated a central place to the environment by articulating environmental change in a manner which necessitates and appeals for action from everyone. As depicted above in more formal spaces of business, policy, and politics operating on multiple scales often find meaning in people’s everyday lives and livelihoods through mass media. This section therefore argues that, media representations—from news to entertainment—provide critical links between formal environmental science and the realities of how people experience and interact with their environments. People abundantly turn to media—such as television, newspapers, magazines, radio, and internet—to help make sense of the many complexities relating to environmental science and governance that (un)consciously shape human identity.
The above notwithstanding, interactions between media representational practices and the environment are multifaceted, dynamic, and cluttered. It is clear that environmental issues shape media reporting; and conversely, journalism shapes ongoing conceptions of environmental problems and associated politics, policy decisions, and activities. Forsyth argues that,
“Assessments of frames should not just be limited to those that are labeled as important at present, but also seek to consider alternative framings that may not currently be considered important in political debates” (Forsyth 20).
Various actors—both individuals and collective—seek to access and utilize mass media sources in order to shape perceptions of environmental issues contingent on their perspectives and interests.[3] Through journalism, certain environmental hazards become news stories, thereby shaping public perception.[4] Lop-sided influences also feed back into these social relationships and further shape emergent frames of news, knowledge, and discourse on environmental reporting.
Amid possible immediate improvements to the fairness, accuracy, and precision of media reporting on environmental issues, many political, economic, cultural, and institutional challenges remain in terms of capturing and categorizing environmental issues through media representations. Although journalists have consistently viewed their role as one of information-dissemination rather than education, in fact the distinction between these roles becomes blurred in practice. As media representations, by their very nature, inherently frame various environmental issues, such practices also then contribute—among a host of factors—to setting agendas for considerations within environmental issues and cultural politics. Willman, a CNN correspondent and field producer opined that—“in terms of agenda-setting . . . the media don’t tell people what to think, but they tell them what to think about.”[5] This statement is reminiscent of that by Cohen in reference to media coverage of foreign policy.[6]
The news industry has faced tremendous challenges since the economic downturn in late 2007. The turn into the twenty-first century has marked a pivotal time for environmental issues, both in terms of threats and opportunities. For instance, in 2009, negotiations have rapidly unfolded to address mitigation of Green House Gas and the associated issues of climate change. Stakes have been high as leaders have sought an agreement to follow the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Meanwhile, political economic forces have contributed to tremendous pressures on and within the news industry, where these issues have become more, not less, challenging to cover. Nonetheless, media representations of Anthropocene geopolitics remain critical to public perceptions of environmental concerns into the twenty-first century.[7] Furthermore, these interacting media portrayals continue to have multifarious implications on ongoing interactions between science, governance, and public understanding/engagement.
As afore mentioned in the opening paragraph of this section, there is empirical evidence to suggest that there have been short-term improvements in media representations of environmental issues, such as more accurate coverage of anthropogenic climate change. However, over the long-term scale, many institutional challenges persist for enhanced media reporting on the environment. The dynamic cultural politics are politicized and contested arenas where agents of definition battle for recognition and discursive traction; and it is here where the implications for climate governance and action remain open considerations. The approaches taken herein align with Foucault’s view that “individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of application.”[8] In so doing, this contribution has sought to begin necessary unpacking and interrogation on how meanings are made and maintained as well as on what historical and biophysical contingencies shape our perceived opportunities and alternatives for climate action. Rutherford points out that these processes thereby “contribute to ‘regimes’ of truth, which circumscribe how the world is apprehended . . .”[9]
Thus, the contemplation that the media is biased in environmental reporting is not all that true. In support of this, Demeritt notes that,
“the notion of a purely scientific realm of objective facts as distinct from a political one of contestable values is idealized by nearly all participants in debates . . . even as it is habitually breached in ordinary practice”.[10]
In this vein, media coverage of the environment is not just a collection of news articles and clips produced by journalists and producers; rather, media coverage signifies key frames derived through complex and nonlinear relationships between scientists, policy actors, and the public that is often mediated by journalists’ news stories. Nisbet et al. have pointed out in research on media coverage of stem cell research that, “the events that take place in the policy sphere and the groups that compete in the political system are not only mirrored (or covered) in the media but also shaped by the media.”[11] Through time, both internal (e.g., journalistic norms) and external (e.g., political economics) factors shaping media representations have dynamically refigured the terms of ongoing interactions in the arena of environmental politics. These have then also influenced ongoing considerations as well as challenges in environmental governance and policy action.[12]
In conclusion, the process of media framing involves an inevitable series of choices to cover certain events within a larger current of dynamic activities. Resulting stories compete for attention and thus permeate ongoing interactions between science, policy, media, and the public in varied ways. Furthermore, these interactions feed back on ongoing media representations. Developments such as the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama, the forty-fourth U.S. President, and his early actions to address various environmental issues may draw further attention to environmental concerns, often via media reports on them. More media coverage, however, of the environment—and fair, precise, and accurate coverage at that—will clearly not be the solution. Improved reporting through greater specificity and contextualization through combined efforts of journalists, editors, and scientists will certainly help to more effectively engage the public and widen the spectrum of possibility for appropriate action. As outlined above, many political, economic, technological, institutional, and cultural factors will continue to pose challenges, as well as opportunities, for media reporting on the environment as we move further into the twenty-first century.
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[1] Certeau, Michel de (1984): The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[2] Brown, J CR Dykers, JR Steele & AB White. (1994). ‘Teenage Room Culture: Where Media and Identities Intersect’, Communication Research 21: pp813-27.
[3] Nisbet M, Mooney C. 2007. Framing Science. Science 316:56
[4] Iyengar S, Kinder DR. 1987. News That Matters: Television and American Opinion. Chicago/London: Univ.
Chicago Press
[5] Boykoff MT. 2007. From convergence to contention: United States mass media representations of
anthropogenic climate change science. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 32:477–89
[6] Cohen B. 1963. The Press and Foreign Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
[7] Rice D. 2008. Climate now shifting on a continental scale—study: migration patterns adjust, plants
bloom early. USA Today. May 15:B11
[8] Foucault M. 1980. Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon (From French by A. Sheridan)
[9] Bennett WL. 2002. News: The Politics of Illusion. New York: Longman
[10] Demeritt D. 2006. Science studies, climate change and the prospects for constructivist critique. Econ.
Soc. 35:453–79
[11] Nisbet MC, Brossard D, Kroepsch A. 2003. Framing science: the stem cell controversy in an age of
press/politics. Press/Politics 8:36–70
[12] Liverman DM. 2004. Who governs, at what scale and at what price? Geography, environmental governance
and the commodification of nature. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 94:734–38
