Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems. Environmental science emerged from the fields of natural history and medicine during the Enlightenment. Today it provides an integrated, quantitative, and interdisciplinary approach to the study of environmental systems.
Popular science is an interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is more broad ranging. It may be written by professional science journalists or by scientists themselves. It is presented in many forms, including books, film and television documentaries, magazine articles, and web pages.
Communication studies or communication science is an academic discipline that deals with processes of human communication and behavior, patterns of communication in interpersonal relationships, social interactions and communication in different cultures. Communication is commonly defined as giving, receiving or exchanging ideas, information, signals or messages through appropriate media, enabling individuals or groups to persuade, to seek information, to give information or to express emotions effectively. Communication studies is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge that encompasses a range of topics, from face-to-face conversation at a level of individual agency and interaction to social and cultural communication systems at a macro level.
New Journalism is a style of news writing and journalism, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, that uses literary techniques unconventional at the time. It is characterized by a subjective perspective, a literary style reminiscent of long-form non-fiction. Using extensive imagery, reporters interpolate subjective language within facts whilst immersing themselves in the stories as they reported and wrote them. In traditional journalism, the journalist is "invisible"; facts are meant to be reported objectively.
Journalistic objectivity is a considerable notion within the discussion of journalistic professionalism. Journalistic objectivity may refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities. First evolving as a practice in the 18th century, a number of critiques and alternatives to the notion have emerged since, fuelling ongoing and dynamic discourse surrounding the ideal of objectivity in journalism.
Advocacy journalism is a genre of journalism that adopts a non-objective viewpoint, usually for some social or political purpose.
Media ethics is the subdivision dealing with the specific ethical principles and standards of media, including broadcast media, film, theatre, the arts, print media and the internet. The field covers many varied and highly controversial topics, ranging from war journalism to Benetton ad campaigns.
The Rashomon effect is a storytelling and writing method in cinema in which an event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved, thereby providing different perspectives and points of view of the same incident. The term, derived from the 1950 Japanese film Rashomon, is used to describe the phenomenon of the unreliability of eyewitnesses.
Environmental history is the study of human interaction with the natural world over time, emphasising the active role nature plays in influencing human affairs and vice versa.
Science journalism conveys reporting about science to the public. The field typically involves interactions between scientists, journalists and the public.
Ecocriticism is the study of literature and ecology from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. It was first originated by Joseph Meeker as an idea called "literary ecology" in his The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (1972).
Rhetoric of science is a body of scholarly literature exploring the notion that the practice of science is a rhetorical activity. It emerged after a number of similarly oriented topics of research and discussion during the late 20th century, including the sociology of scientific knowledge, history of science, and philosophy of science, but it is practiced most typically by rhetoricians in academic departments of English, speech, and communication.
Environmental communication is "the dissemination of information and the implementation of communication practices that are related to the environment. In the beginning, environmental communication was a narrow area of communication; however, nowadays, it is a broad field that includes research and practices regarding how different actors interact with regard to topics related to the environment and how cultural products influence society toward environmental issues".
Political journalism is a broad branch of journalism that includes coverage of all aspects of politics and political science, although the term usually refers specifically to coverage of civil governments and political power.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to environmental journalism.
The term "journalism genres" refers to various journalism styles, fields or separate genres, in writing accounts of events.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to journalism:
Around the world, journalists who report on environmental problems such as deforestation, pollution and climate change, are forming networks and associations. The largest of these—the Society of Environmental Journalists in the United States—was formed in 1990 and has over 1400 members. Since then, journalists have formed new networks in Africa, Asia and other regions. These activities that these groups undertake include training programmes, advice to journalists, and advocacy to raise the prominence of environmental topics in the media. In Africa and Asia, these networks also act to raise funds to support better quality reporting on environmental issues. James Fahn, director of the Earth Journalism Network, notes however that donors generally seem less willing to support these journalism associations than they do environmental advocacy groups.
Interpretive journalism or interpretive reporting requires a journalist to go beyond the basic facts related to an event and provide more in-depth news coverage. The lack of precise borders accompanied with diverse theoretical approaches related to what interpretative journalism is in the modern world results in the practice of interpretative journalism overlapping with various other genres of journalism, and furthermore operationalization of interpretative journalism becomes largely blurred. Interpretive journalists must have atypical awareness with and comprehension of a subject with their work involving looking for systems, rationale and influences that explain what they are reporting.
Adversarial journalism refers to a kind of journalism or a journalistic role where the journalist adopts an oppositional and combative style of reporting and interviewing. The goal of adversarial journalism is to reveal supposed wrongdoings of actors under investigation. Instead of being completely impartial, adversarial journalists take sides in what they believe to be true. They deliberately combine information with commentary or opinion in their writing. In particular, adversarial journalists remain relentlessly hostile and highly skeptical regarding government, big business companies, and political events, questions, institutions and personalities. Adversarial journalism is thought to be traditional in liberal democracies where journalism is regarded as a "Fourth Estate". It is also considered an extreme form of participant journalism or advocacy journalism. It has been contrasted with public or civic journalism.
