Role of Radio News On Raising Environmental Awareness

One of the dominant views is that there are two major stages in the history of humanity. While one of them is the breakaway of human from nomadism to sedentism and as a result tending towards to agriculture and husbandry from hunting, the other one is creation of technical world by breaking away from the earth. While on one hand life conditions are improving in consequence of technological advances, balance of natural life on the other hand has begun to change. Since the technological advances are related directly to the offerings of nature, by ongoing nature of the development, uncontrollable destructions have occurred in natural life. Ecological balance has begun to change in an uncontrolled manner. Individuals whose life is not under the threat of environmental issues can be informed about environmental problems, their extent and presence via media. However, do the media inform the society about environmental issues? In this study that is prepared to find an answer to this question how and to which extend the environmental issues are reflected in radio journalism is revealed and in what way the related news are guiding people towards gaining environmental awareness is discussed by basing on the radio, which is today still considered as the most trustable and as one of the fastest mass media instrument. Within the scope of this study, each one of total 611 news for 5 days newscast of 4 radio stations with different qualities are categorized according to their subjects. News related to the environment are detailed through content analysis. In order to minimize the error margin of the detailing process, the news is confirmed not only by listening from the radio but also by reading the texts acquired from the news units of radio organizations. As a result of the study, the news related to environment is emphasized proportionately and representations of this news are qualitatively questioned. Thus, it is revealed that the news related to environment is not considered important by radio journalism.