15 pages, via online journal article, Okja is a fictional Netflix original film that was released in 2017. Okja features a “super pig” that is owned by the large, agricultural company Mirando Corporation. Okja is raised by a young girl, Mija, and her grandfather in the South Korean mountains. The film climaxes when Mija and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) narrowly save Okja and a smuggled piglet from the slaughter process. The purpose of this study was to understand how college students responded to the film. The viewers of this film included students who were majoring in a field within the agricultural college (COA) at Texas Tech University as well as students who were majoring in a field outside of agriculture (NCOA). Emergent themes from this focus group study identified the film as overdramatized and that the film misrepresented food production. Previous knowledge and experiences impacted how viewers perceived the film with COA students indicating that Okja was portrayed more like a pet than as a food animal. Both COA and NCOA students indicated that their food purchasing decisions would not be affected by viewing the film. Findings suggested that entertainment films may not be an effective method for changing public opinion of agriculture and food production. Transparency in agriculture through real-life and real-time activities in a documentary style may serve a greater role in improving public opinion of food and agricultural production practices and industries.Findings from this study serve as an indicator of the role entertainment films play in swaying public opinion of food and agriculture.
9 pages., Via online journal., This paper looks at how knowledge has been communicated within a multi-layered water governance structure in order to manage non-point source (NPS) pollution in South Korea. Since 28,300 ha of wetlands were reclaimed in Saemangeum, on the western side of the country, in 2006, the artificial lake created has suffered from chronic pollution. For the purposes of integrated water management, a water governance structure was formed linking organisations ranging from local to national scales. Despite institutional efforts to implement integrated water management and a governance approach, knowledge of NPS pollution and its management was produced and communicated among certain stakeholders only, such as policy and technical experts. In-depth interview and archival analysis of this research attempt to explain why and how the loss of knowledge communication occurred in this context. The first result of this research illustrates that, while knowledge communication has been smooth at the national and provincial layers, it has not taken place efficiently through to the local layer. When it comes to local farmers and governmental organisations and experts in particular, knowledge nodes have not functioned. Second, the research suggests that non-communication of knowledge has been mobilised as a professional strategy. Actors at the local layer have prioritized their professional interests and intentionally avoided knowledge communication with other department or ministries. Local and community actors have chosen not to provide farmers information. We conclude by discussing policy implications for knowledge communication and inclusive water governance.
15 pages., via online journal., Jeju, an island in Korea, became a place to site wind turbines with an unusually high level of public acceptance. Based on interviews, media analyses, and policy research, we found that the collective memory of socio-economic deprivation enabled community engagement to matter to residents, the provincial government, and environmental activists. It was within socio-historically contextualized processes of articulating the vision of a “good” society that an actual form of community engagement, however inadequate it might appear to some, became relevant to stakeholders in a particular locality. We emphasize that community engagement in renewable energy governance does not have one but multiple and situated ways of mattering depending on local contexts.
