Environmental Injustice

Media's Impact on Environmental Injustice



Media's Impact on Environmental Injustice

The term environmental justice gain quite popularity when environmental and social justice activists and scholars raised their voice against the injustice. However, media have proved to be a useful proponent to spread their voice with the world. The term subaltern is used for men, women or even any social group who are facing political, social or geographical discrimination (Bingham and Blowers et al., 2003, p. 222). More specifically, the term subaltern signified by the works of Subaltern group who were South Asian historians and had explored the political-actor role of the masses, rather than the real political roles in social and elite system. Also, the term “subaltern” is referred to denote the colonized masses of the sub-continent in 1970s. The concept of “subaltern” is rather difficult to understand and proved to be culturally problematic as it kept on being a Eurocentric method of historical inquiry while studying the non-Western peoples which includes the peoples belonging to Asia, Africa and the Middle Eastern countries (Parkash, 1994, pp. 1475-1490).

Impact of Media on Environmental Justice Movement

Media has contributed greatly in the fight of subalterns against environmental injustice. This movement gained its momentum back in the 1980s when the poor and mainly rural Afro-American communities fight their way against world huge corporations and uninterested government agencies.

However, the fight against environmental injustice begins by the incident of Love Canal back in the 1980s. At this time span, media played quite constructive role to explain the injustice towards colour races (mitpress2.mit.edu, n.d.). By the 1900s the term of “environmental racism” gained quite hype against the events that occurred at the Warren County and the North Carolina's state where African-American community were in majority (mitpress2.mit.edu, n.d.; nrdc.org, 1988). Afterwards Afton protests were keyed up within the ...