19 pages, Audience-facilitated information flow has become the new norm created by a public divergence from traditional media sources. Mobile device advancements and partnerships have changed how audiences view news media and the sources relied upon to obtain information. With these advancements, social media users have become primary information providers and information gatekeepers. Twitter specifically has become a news media platform for some based on its effectiveness in facilitating information flow and triggering reorganization as it provides a platform for collaboration and coordination. Despite widespread acceptance of the threat climate change poses by the scientific community, it is still a topic of contention on social media. Climate conversations are typically approached with an us versus them mindset with us being used as representation of the communities to which audiences belong. The communities one belongs to typically follows social media users social, political and environmental ideologies. Walton’s theory of argument or inference schemes served as the theoretical framework for this study. Argument schemes represent common arguments and special context arguments, in this case scientific argumentation. Walton’s argument from ignorance was used as a framework for the study. The argument states that if there has been a thorough search through the knowledge base then concrete proof of a fact would exist. The findings indicated social media may be a useful tool when exploring climate change conversations through a sociopolitical lens and additional research is needed to closely examine how political ideologies, global location, and different environmental topics impact issue awareness and beliefs.
11 pages., Pakistan is highly vulnerable to extreme climatic events, such as floods and droughts. This study determines the farmers’ risk perception, risk attitude, adaptation measures and various aspects of vulnerability to climate change (e.g. floods, droughts, heavy rainfalls, pests and disease) at farm level in rural Pakistan. The risk perception and attitude of farm households are crucial factors that influence farm productivity, investment and management decisions at this level. A well-designed questionnaire was used to interview 720 farm households from six districts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. A binary logit model was used to determine the main factors that affect the choice of adaptation strategies of the farm household. The findings revealed that crop diversification, changing crop varieties, altering the crop calendar, varying the fertilizer used, mulching and farm insurance were the main adaptation strategies followed by farm households. The results of the binary logit model revealed that age, education, farm size, household size, credit accessibility, annual income and the perception on the increase in temperature and decrease in rainfall had significant influence on the selection of the adaption strategies. The findings of this study can provide guidance, policy recommendations and reference for future researchers.
19 pages., via online journal., This article provides a visual analysis of a set of peopleless photographs taken in 2006 of a falling home erosion in the village of Shishmaref, Alaska, that have been widely circulated in reporting about the relocation of the village due to climate change. It asks whether the visual contract between spectator and absent climate change victim extends beyond an empathetic response to action toward restoring the lost home. The article explores the relationship of contemporary scholarship on postmodern ruination in U.S. Rust Belt cities and the Shishmaref fallen home photograph as a means to analyze the work done by rural ruination.
