| Summary: | 碩士 === 臺中師範學院 === 環境教育研究所 === 92 === ABSTRACT
The purpose of this research was to study the coverage of environmental news in our current newspapers and to discuss its impact on public environmental cognition, attitude and behavior in order to provide the newspaper offices with some suggestions to their environmental news report, and further give the environmental protection administrations an advice on practicing environmental education by utilizing the newspaper propaganda. The researcher used content analysis method by analyzing the coverage of environmental news in the three current major newspapers in Taiwan, “United Daily News,” “China Times” and “The Liberty Times,” and then randomly sampled out the residents of four counties and city in the middle of Taiwan as the subjects of the questionnaire survey. The researcher further analyzed the questionnaire survey shown that the respondents’ opinions about the environmental news coverage in the newspapers, the respondents’ general cognition, attitude and behavior to their current environment, and the influence of those news coverage to their environmental knowledge, attitude and behavior.
The results of the content analysis of the environmental news coverage in the three major newspapers and the statistical analysis of the subjects’ responses showed that the coverage of environmental news in the newspapers was highly regarded as the main source of environmental knowledge to most of people. Furthermore, it helped individual respondent and his/her families rise up their environmental knowledge level, develop a correct environmental attitude and cultivate a positive environmental behavior. Thus, the newspaper was the best media to practice and promote environmental education. The researcher listed the three most urgent items in order, which described that the public considered the coverage of environmental news in the newspapers should necessarily be corrected─“It did not give the public a balance report to both positive and negative sides,” “The environmental news was not frequently reported,” and “The contents of the report were not thorough and accurate enough.” Most of the environmental news resources in the three major newspapers came from the “official government” and were mostly reported by adopting the personal interview. The environmental news was often published with 1/4 or 1/8 space size of a whole page with the title mainly discussed “the ecological conversation and ecotourism,” “the pollution and prevention of trash and industrial waste,” “water resource conversation and water pollution prevention,” or “the environmental health and food hygiene.” In addition, in terms of the intension of environmental education, the coverage of environmental news put more emphasis on its knowledge base, and focuses on reporting “special events,” “the investigation report” and “the government orders’ proclamations.” Among the three major newspapers, on the one hand, “United Daily News” demonstrated a larger proportion on the environmental news report than the other two, and “China Times” tended to use a big page size to report the environmental news. On the other hand, “United Daily News” covered more on the issue of “environmental health and food hygiene.” “The Liberty Times” showed a large proportion of report on the intension of the “knowledge” of environmental education; however, it presented a smaller proportion of report on the concept of environmental awareness.
Moreover, the result of this research showed that the respondents’ environmental knowledge level was passable (the mean of the correct answers made to the questionnaires is 61.9%) and still could be lifted up. The respondents seemed show their higher understandings and interests to the environmental news that was closely related to their surroundings in their daily lives. Besides, the respondents who read “Min Sheng Newspaper” regularly answered the questions about “the pollution and prevention of trash and industrial waste” more correctly than those who were “China Times” regular readers; nevertheless, this result did not make any obvious difference on account of lacking of the research samples. The respondents reading “United Daily News” regularly understood the descriptions of the sandstorm and the energies in Taiwan more well than the respondents reading “The Liberty Times.” Also, the respondents who were the regular readers of “United Daily News” showed their keens on the issue of “the global warming gas” obviously higher than those who were the regular readers of “China Times.” Considering to the issue of environmental protection, the survey respondents suggested that we should improve our environment by means of emphasizing on environmental education at schools, disseminating the environmental protection through the media, and taking the measures to present the environmental pollutions. The environmental protection administration might enhance the public environmental protection via through undertaking the complete coordinated measures, spreading and advocating the information about the environmental protection.
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