Green Media and Sustainable Futures

Course goals

After completing this course, students will have:
•        developed a critical understanding of how (green) media - in a broader sense, including digital media, transmedia, theatre, film and television - afford (playful forms of) civic engagement;
•        developed a critical understanding of how (green) media can influence the public's awareness and assessment of societal (environmental) challenges by building alternative eco-narratives, outlining new forms of ecological identity, and fostering environmental and ecological literacy.
 
After completing this course, students will be able to:
•          recognize the environmental impact of today's (green) media objects and practices;
•          conduct a (comparative) analysis of contemporary green media phenomena;
•          articulate and operationalize valid research questions about green media objects and practices;
•          write academically on this subject on an advanced level;
•          use their methodological skills to conduct a framing, discourse or affordance analysis as well as articulate a media-comparative perspective.

Content

Contemporary media are increasingly used not only to entertain, but also to persuade people, raising their awareness and changing or reinforcing their attitudes and behavior for the good of society. 'Green media' seek to contribute to ecological thought and to make people become ecological citizens. This course introduces students to key environmental issues as these are ariculated in computer games (ecogames, eco-modding), VR, social media, data visualizations, transmedia, film (art, Hollywood, science fiction, video essays), documentaries, television series and theatre. The underlying questions are: how can media address today’s environmental challenges? How do we conceptualize impact of (green) media from a media-comparative perspective? How can green media facilitate social change on a micro, meso and macro level? How do green media construct (playful forms of) civic engagement by positioning its users in medium-specific ways? What is the environmental impact of media production, distrubution and reception? Examining the ways in which green media can influence the public’s awareness of environmental issues, this course is a critical starting point for students researching and studying the growing field of green media studies as a subdiscipline within the environmental humanities.
 
This course is the fourth course in the specialization track Participatory Cultures, Media production and Sustainable Futures.
 
LAS and TCS students who follow this course as part of the core curriculum of their major need to complete a compulsory preparation course/assignment. See https://tcs.sites.uu.nl for more information.

Additional information