19 pages, Previous scholarship suggests that elite media have tended to pay little attention to the adverse environmental impacts associated with meat consumption and production. Through content analysis of 116 articles from 2019, published on eight popular online news sites consumed by a wide range of demographics in the UK, including lower-income groups (the sector most likely to eat meat), we identify common anti-meat and pro-meat environmental narratives, solutions and recommendations, and the dominant sentiment towards both meat consumption and production. We observed a significantly greater presence of anti-meat consumption and/or production narratives than pro-meat. Over half the articles showed anti-meat consumption sentiment, with only 5% predominately in favour. 10% were against unspecified or industrial production practices, 28% were against industrial-scale farming but supported sustainable methods; and none were entirely in favour of the meat industry. These findings are reflected in the dominant recommendation, present in over 60% of articles, to eat less meat. Our results add substantially to previous media research, particularly showing the increased volume of coverage of the meat-environment nexus, varying levels of contestation around meat eating, and the division of responsibility between consumers and industry.
12 pages, Background
Health risk communication plays a key role in promoting self-protective measures, which are critical in suppressing COVID-19 contagion. Relatively little is known about the communication channels used by rural poor populations to learn novel measures and their effectiveness in promoting self-protective behaviors. Behavioral change can be shaped by people’s trust in government institutions which may be differentiated by social identity, including indigeneity.
Methods
During an early phase of the pandemic, we conducted two telephone surveys with over 460 communities – both Indigenous and mestizo – without road access and limited communication access in the Peruvian Amazon. This is the first report on the association of information sources about self-protective measures against COVID-19 with the adoption of self-protective behaviors in remote rural areas in developing countries.
Results
People mainly relied on mass media (radio, television, newspapers) and interpersonal sources (local authorities, health workers, neighbors/relatives) for information and adopted handwashing, mask-wearing, social distancing, and social restrictions to varying degrees. Overall, self-protective behaviors were largely positively and negatively associated with mass media and interpersonal sources, respectively, depending on the source-measure combination. Mistrust of the government seems to have shaped how Indigenous and mestizo peoples distinctively responded to interpersonal information sources and relied on mass media.
Conclusions
Our findings call for improved media access to better manage pandemics in rural areas, especially among remote Indigenous communities.
17 pages, This article draws upon research exploring a project that combines edutainment and participatory communication strategies as an approach to social change in Malawi. Throughout the research, I take a critical stance that seeks to uplift voices of an audience attending a radio listening club (RLC) and therefore utilize participatory methods to co-create the body of knowledge with study participants. In this article, I query RLC audience’s thoughts of the project’s relevance and influence in their daily lives. Oriented by Hall’s concepts of encoding and decoding, I analyse my data focusing on the dynamics between the objectives of the producers and the lived reality of the participants. Findings reveal that audience’s motivation for continued attendance of the RLC is different to that intended in the encoding process; rather audiences negotiate the relevance of messages to their own needs, those of their children and utilize the space to extend their social capital.
5 pages, Information plays important role in agriculture development. This study investigated the nature
and extent of available agricultural information sources and information seeking patterns of farmers in Punjab Pakistan. To conduct this study, survey method was used and the population of
the study was the farmers of Punjab, the largest province of Pakistan. The sample of 60 farmers
was selected during the year 2020 by using convenient sampling technique. Furthermore, these farmers were selected from Attock, Kasur and Bahawalnagar to ensure the representation from northern, central, and southern parts of the province of Punjab. The responses of the framers were collected in the form of questionnaire and researcher used adopted descriptive statistics. Results revealed that majority 41 percent of farmers seek information to enhance
their agricultural knowledge. It was found that comparatively interpersonal channels were mostly
preferred with the 56 percent whereas mass media occupied second position with 42 percent. It was also found that numerous types of information sources such as interpersonal sources, mass media and new media were available to disseminate information related to farmers’ needs. It was also revealed that among information needs, market and weather forecast trends were on top priority ranked 1st and 2nd respectively.
