1.

The role of audiovisual materials in sensitizing public awareness of environmental issues

Cinema and in general audiovisual productions (newsreels and documentary films) were used in promoting politics concerning primarly the agriculture. For example in the United States of the 30s the government produced and supported several documentary films to contrast and oppose the misuses of the land and their consequences (some titles are included in the index produced during the research). But in Europe and the United States and Canada environmental issues are present in the production of fiction and documentary films especially from the 60's, during an age that saw the birth and growth of environmental awareness and social movements that promoted it.

Over the past 20 years the development of environmental awareness has contributed to and also was influenced by a substantial production of documentary films and video spread across multiple channels: festivals, television, exhibitions, conferences, home video, and since at least 15 years, the Internet.

It 's clear the difficulty, if not the impossibility, to get quantitative data on the world stage. And also it is not simple to assess the degree of influence on the overall public of this extremely variegated production. It is clear that audiovisuals and in general the media play a role today as never did before. The effectiveness and immediacy of the messages conveyed via audiovisual media is well-known.

Then there is no doubt that the media play an instrumental role in modern societies. With regard to environmental policy and communication, media have a central role to play especially in promoting environmental awareness and education. In fact, the various media, and in particular audiovisuals products, have a two-pronged role. On the one hand, they help to explain the environmental policies, regulations and plans to the public and on the other they reflect the concerns of the public and of the

specialists regarding different environmental problems and thus pressure the decision makers to solve a specific environmental issue.

In particular, today the documentary films that cover environmental issues such as global warming, misuse of natural resources and mishandling of waste materials, and their material and social consequences can cause greater awareness of impending dangers and stimulate debate about what the communities, the governments, the international organizations, Ngo and the individuals can and must do to prevent ecological disasters.

A case to be quoted about the influence of audiovisual product, is the documentary film The Unconvenient Truth: "it has also managed to bring the most important technical and scientific problem of our time into the public sphere in an accessible way at a moment when it was needed, as illustrated by the British government's decision to send a copy of Gore's film to every secondary school in the country" (Jane Chapman).

On the macro-level in the environment field, we have a number of precautionary policy tools, such as environmental research, establishing protected areas and environmental planning, as well as a number of corrective policy tools, such as relocation of industries, replacement of old technologies with new and clean technologies and environmental monitoring. The audiovisual products play an influential role both as a precautionary tool to warn against potential environmental threats and, at the same time, suggesting corrective solutions as well as being a monitoring tool.

Since from global warming to species extinction the planet earth in our age is facing a large scale environmental change and these ecological concerns are often in direct conflict with modern industrialization, the role of the media is even more crucial in sensitizing and building the public awareness.

Considering also that our scientific understanding of the global environment is increasingly detailed and complex, the citizens are progressively dependent on "mediated" information for their opinions and public policy decisions.

News, documentary films, educational videos and entertainment media then play a significant role in negotiating the tension between ecological sustainability and rising consumption and resource depletion. However the impact of audiovisual products on the public does not seem fully valued in part because of the complexity and uncertainty of involvements that develop between the producers (and customers) and consumers of audiovisual content and also because it is not possible concretely lead an overall research.

Notably surveys conducted on the impact in local communities, for example through screenings and discussions held before a small audience, can give useful results. Some experiments in this direction were conducted with the express purpose of getting the reactions and answers of the public. The participants were requested to consider the social and cultural impact (or lack) of a specific documentary film and to say if their knowledge on the argument was improved by the audiovisual materials.

The overall evaluation of these experiments makes us believe that the use of audiovisual materials is fundamental but equally fundamental is that the public should be always aware of the language of the media to criticize them and use them in a critical and conscious way.

Bibliography

Allan, Stuart; Adam, Barbara and Carter, Cynthia. (1999) Environmental Risks and the Media. New York: Routledge. Anderson, Alison. (1997) Media, Culture and the Environment. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Boyce, Tammy and Lewis, Justin (eds.). (2009) Climate Change and the Media. New York: Peter Lang. Bous, Derek. (2000) Wildlife Films. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Brereton, Pat. (2004) Hollywood Utopia: Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema. Bristol: Intellect. Chapman, Graham; Kumar, Keval; Fraser, Caroline and Gaver, Ivor. (1997) Environmentalism and the Mass Media: The North-South Divide. London: Routledge. Chapman, Jane. (2009) Issues in Contemporary Documentary. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gauntlett, David. (1996) Video Critical: Children, the Environment and Media Power. Luton: John Libbey Media. Hansen, Anders. (2010) Environment, Media and Communication. London: Routledge. Hansen, Anders (ed.). (1993) The Mass Media and Environmental Issues. Leicester: Leicester University Press.