scholarly journals EcoDragons: A Game for Environmental Education and Public Outreach

Insects ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 776
Author(s):  
Rassim Khelifa ◽  
Hayat Mahdjoub
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Environmental Advocacy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Societal Issues ◽  
Universal Language ◽  
The One

Environmental education is crucial to tackling the pressing ecological and societal issues on our planet. Although there are various ways to approach environmental education and raise public awareness, games are potentially an effective vehicle of knowledge and engagement because they vulgarize the scientific information in a universal ‘language’ and bring people together. Here, we designed a game, EcoDragons, that integrates principles of ecology, biological conservation, life history, and taxonomy. The protagonists of the game are dragonflies and damselflies. The aim of the game is to colonize habitats with different species and use ecological processes (e.g., predation, competition, and mutualism) and conservation measures (e.g., restoration and reintroduction) to face random environmental disturbances (e.g., climate warming, drought, pollution, and biological invasion). The version of the game presented in this paper was based on European species. The game includes 50 species (25 dragonflies and 25 damselflies). The winner of the game is the one who occupies more habitats, establishes and maintains the largest number of species, and solves more anthropogenic disturbances. EcoDragons has a global outreach potential to educate the public about ecology, conservation, and organismic life history, and will probably engage people in environmental advocacy.

scholarly journals Post-Truth: Hegemony on Social Media and Implications for Sustainability Communication

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 2120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Jaques ◽  
Mine Islar ◽  
Gavin Lord
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marxian Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
Science In Society

Contrary to what practice suggests, social media platforms may not be an appropriate forum for communicating with civil society about sustainability issues such as climate change. Misinformation campaigns are distorting the line between fact and falsity on social media platforms, and there has been a profound shift in the way that social media users consume and interact with information. These conditions have been popularly labeled as the post-truth era. Drawing from Neo-Marxian theory, we argue that post-truth can be explained as a new iteration of ideological struggle under capitalist hegemony. We substantiate this claim through a mixed methods investigation synthesizing corpus-assisted lexical analysis and critical discourse analysis to evaluate 900 user-generated comments taken from three articles on socioenvironmental topics published on Facebook by news organizations in the United States. The results showed that the nature of this struggle is tied explicitly to the role of science in society, where the legitimacy of science is caught in a tug-of-war of values between elitism on the one hand and a rejection of the establishment on the other. It follows that presenting truthful information in place of false information is an insufficient means of coping with post-truth. We conclude by problematizing the notion that Facebook is an adequate forum for public dialogue and advocate for a change in strategy from those wishing to communicate scientific information in the public sphere.

The Revelation of Kitakyushu City’s Experience on Environmental Education

2012 ◽  
Vol 518-523 ◽  
pp. 5189-5192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Jing Fan
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Education ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Negative Influence ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
The Public ◽  
Production Knowledge ◽  
United Nation

With the rapid development of science and technology, we could enjoy more and more convenience of modern technology, we have to face the negative influence of modern technology on environment. The Kitakyushu city used to be one of most heavily air-polluted regions in Japan. Through decades of improvement on the environmental education, the Kitakyushu city become the ‘Demonstration city on environment protect of Japan’ and the ‘Typical city of environmental governance’ award by the United Nation. These effective measures include increasing the investment in the environmental education and scientific research, extensively conducting environmental education to improve the public awareness of environmental protection and promoting the integration and transformation of production, knowledge and research on environmental protection. This paper studied the main steps that the Kitakyushu city take to improve its environment pollution and analyze the revelation of these useful measures to China’s environmental education.

scholarly journals Strategy To Improve Competence Of Public Service Officials In The West Sulawesi Province, Indonesia

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 66
Author(s):  
Rohana Thahier
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
The Public ◽  
Negative Perceptions ◽  
The One ◽  
High Level ◽  
Resource Sector ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Creativity And Innovation

The high level of public complaints against bureaucracy shows that on the one hand the quality of bureaucratic service has, in public opinion, been found wanting. At the same time, public awareness has continued to grow, with consumers demanding they have rights to receive high quality service (Dwiyanto, 2002). The quality of public service is lacking. Often bribes are required, services are not guaranteed, and procedures are over-complicated. The perceptions of the public human resource sector are various: Professionalism is lacking, corruption, collusion and nepotism run rampant, wages are insufficient, service to the public is over-complicated, relationships are based on a patrion-client system, there is lack of creativity and innovation, not to mention other potential negative perceptions which essentially show that this system is still weak in Indonesia.  All this motivates us to reform the public human resources sector of Mamuju Regency, West Sulawesi (Reformation of Bureaucracy).

EU regulations and the current position of animal welfare.

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-155
Author(s):  
Donald M. Broom
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Public Image ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Terminology ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Sentient Beings ◽  
The Eu

Abstract In most countries of the world, sustainability issues are viewed by the public as of increasing importance and animal welfare is perceived to be both a public good and a key aspect of these issues. European Union animal welfare policy and legislation on animal welfare has helped animals, has had much positive influence in the world and has improved the public image of the EU. Health is a key part of welfare and the one-health and one-welfare approaches emphasize that these terms mean the same for humans and non-humans. The animals that humans use are described as sentient beings in EU legislation. Scientific information about animal welfare, like that produced by EFSA, is used in the formulation of the wide range of EU animal welfare laws. The European Commission has an animal welfare strategy including the Animal Welfare Platform. However, most kinds of animals kept in the EU are not covered by legislation, and they are subject to some of the worst animal welfare problems, so a general animal welfare law and specific laws on several species are needed. Animal sentience and welfare should be mentioned, using accurate scientific terminology, in many trade-related laws as well as in animal-specific laws.

scholarly journals PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION ON COVID-19 IN SOUTH SUMATRA: CALLING FOR A MORE SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-263
Author(s):  
Sena Putra Prabujaya ◽  
Anang Dwi Santoso
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Public Knowledge ◽  
Social Resilience ◽  
City Governments ◽  
The Public ◽  
Critical Situation ◽  
Public Sector Innovation ◽  
The One

On the one hand the COVID-19 pandemic is seen as a disaster that has had a massive impact on various aspects of life, but on the other hand it is considered as momentum to urge the public organizations to be more innovative and adaptive in adapting to various types of new conditions and adjustments. Many studies have explored public sector innovation, especially in normal circumstances. While studies on the public sector innovation in a critical situation have not caught much attention from academics. This study aimed to fill the gap by analyzing the public sector innovation in South Sumatra as one of the provinces with the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia. There was a total of 16 innovations in this study. Content analysis was conducted to determine the types, categories, innovators, and challenges faced. The researchers found that the organizations that innovate (innovators) consisted of city governments, regency governments, provincial governments, central government representatives, and the community. Meanwhile, for the innovation category, the researchers found more innovations with types of public services and health information. The researchers also found three types of innovation categories in South Sumatra including mass/social resilience, quick response/quick wins, and public knowledge. Lastly, the challenges in implementing the innovation which includes public awareness, human resources, financial, facilities and infrastructure, and time. Academically, this study contributes to the understanding of public sector innovation in a critical situation, that innovation in such condition is an innovation that was made for pragmatic purposes and it won’t last. It is only adjusted to the situations that force people to implement physical distancing to each other.

The new information / communication system of the INGV towards the press as a tool for correct scientific dissemination and against fake news

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeria De Paola ◽  
Francesca Pezzella ◽  
Marco Cirilli ◽  
Concetta Felli ◽  
Caterina Piccione ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Communication System ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Scientific Language ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Press ◽  
Press Office

<p>INGV carries out, among other activities, seismic and volcanic monitoring of the Italian territory.</p><p>One of the main focus of the Institute is to widely disseminate information on research in these subject fields, with the aim of raising public awareness of issues that affect everyone's life.Despite the use of a simplified scientific language, the transmission of this kind of information has often proved difficult even for the specialized public of press operators who, if not experts in the subjects treated by INGV, tend not to consider the information transmitted and, consequently, not to convey it on their press organs.Therefore, in order to improve information for the press and the public, the INGV has developed a constant communication system through the use of social networks. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and WhatsApp represent a reality in which INGV is a constant actor of scientific information in geosciences.Different languages ​​have been developed for the different communication channels: the Twitter limit of 280 characters, for example, forces the use of simple but exhaustive verbal forms for the scientific concepts.In addition to the thematic channels that strictly refer to the subjects of the "Earthquakes", "Volcanoes" and "Environment" Departments, the INGV has developed institutional channels that concern the body's activities as a whole. These channels are managed by the Press Office which, among other things, performs the functions of the Public Relations Office, a real institutional "front office" of Italian public institutions.Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp are the social networks used for the institutional communication and are mainly managed by the Institute's Press Office (with the precision that the Twitter channel refers to the President of the INGV and identifies itself as @ingv_president ).The constant information produced on social networks has created an await for our "news" and a feeling of esteem from the public: this has given rise to a spontaneous "defense curb" towards the sporadic phenomenon of the "haters" and / or of fake scientists who have tried to use the comments tool on the social networks of INGV to get their own visibility. The purpose of the document we want to present is to illustrate how the smart communication flows towards the press and general public, through the constant use of social media, have produced a numerically increased and increasingly positive diffusion of the INGV brand in the press and in user re-posts. This has led to the spread of accredited scientific news in geoscience subjects, in contrast to fake authors and fake news.This type of communication is very useful in the context of particularly sensitive issues (such as in highly seismic or volcanic territories) where false authors easily spread alarmist news.</p>

scholarly journals DNA debate. An online public engagement initiative

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
C Mayeur ◽  
W Van Hoof
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Genomic Information ◽  
Radio Stations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Societal Issues ◽  
Societal Norms ◽  
Norms And Values

Abstract Because of personalized medicine and the need for massive data sharing, genomics is becoming everybody's business. There is a need to raise public awareness and to make citizens' voices heard on the ethical, legal, and societal issues (ELSI) in genomics. Therefore, Sciensano - the scientific Institute of Public Health in Belgium - organized an online public debate on the use of genomic information in health care, to produce recommendations based on citizens' values for health policymakers, related experts, and stakeholders. To launch this public debate, Sciensano created an interactive website with a discussion platform. We provided more than 75 high-schools with an educational package to help them organize the debate in classrooms, and organized an essay contest. We developed an online teaser test, based on 15 ethical dilemmas in genomics, and a short information video. The DNA debate was covered by national newspapers, television, and radio stations. In total, 1106 users voiced 1247 opinions on the website. Preliminary results from the qualitative analysis of these contributions show great diversity in societal norms and values surrounding genomics. The general interest for the DNA debate indicates that citizens realize that genomics can have a big impact on the organization of health care and that they are willing to contribute to the discussion about how genomic information should be governed in society. This DNA online debate shows that citizens can make meaningful contributions to a complex field like ELSI in genomics. Continued involvement of the public in the governance of genomic information in society is vital. It ensures that societal norms and values guide the technology and not the other way around. Key messages The online DNA debate raised public awareness and made citizens’ voices heard on the ethical, legal, and societal issues in genomics. Continued involvement of the public in the governance of genomic information in society is vital.

Digital Media in Grassroots Anti-Corruption Mobilizations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Mattoni
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Principal Agent ◽  
The Public ◽  
Principal Agent Problem ◽  
The One ◽  
Near Future ◽  
Situated Approach

Corruption is a global problem that affects millions of people, and activists all over the world mobilize against it. When they do so, they increasingly employ various types of digital media. First, the chapter discusses two leading roles that digital media might have in grassroots anti-corruption struggles, each of them linked to one specific approach to corruption. On the one hand, they are in line with a view of corruption as a principal–agent problem, hence assisting activists in enlarging the monitoring and denouncing capacity of people concerning corruption. On the other hand, they can sustain a view of corruption as a collective action problem, hence helping activists in increasing the public awareness on corruption to change the normative understanding of what corruption is and does to societies. Second, the chapter addresses digital media as they entangle with big data. While anti-corruption activists have always relied on data of all kinds to support their struggles, this section tackles three specific types of data-related practices (data production, data embedment, and data transformation). It also shows how they are in tune with either the collective action or the principal–agent approach to corruption. Third, the chapter discusses another, more pragmatic, and situated approach to corruption and, in its framework, the potential role of digital media for anti-corruption activists, arguing for the development of comparative studies on the subject matter. Finally, conclusions revisit the previous sections, taking into consideration three main directions toward which research on anti-corruption from the grassroots and its relationship with digital media might develop in the near future.

Processes of hybridization and de-hybridization: organizing and the task at hand

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 710-726 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustaf Kastberg ◽  
Cristian Lagström
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Complex Task ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Societal Issues ◽  
The Social ◽  
Hybrid Organizing ◽  
The One ◽  
And Control

Purpose The problematization indicates the need for enhancing the understanding of hybrid settings as potentially dynamic, changing and fragile. The purpose of this paper is to generate the knowledge through a conceptualization of the relationship between hybrid organizing and object, helping us understand how and why hybridization takes place or de-hybridizing occurs. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on a longitudinal qualitative case study of an attempt to introduce cost-benefit calculations as a management initiative in the social sector. In total, 18 observations of meetings and 48 interviews were done. Findings The main contribution is the empirically detailed description of how hybridizing must be understood in connection to a complex task at hand. A core observation is how complexity is escaped by either an intensive framing or compartmentalization – the former either leading to a disciplined hybrid allowing efficient action or to a hot and contested situation characterized by inertia. The latter, compartmentalization, presupposes less complexity with the potential of full de-hybridization into single-purpose organizing, failing to deal with the complex task at hand. Research limitations/implications A limitation is the one case approach and further research could focus on other settings. Practical implications The paper provides concepts useful for analysis of specific cooperative arrangements. Social implications The authors believe that the findings can bring useful insights to professionals, policy makers and others who are engaging in and addressing complex societal issues, not least within the public sector, a matter all too often overlooked by the accounting research community. Originality/value The originality of the paper is the focus on the organization and control in relation to the task at hand.

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