The Formation of Environmental Consciousness in Taiwan: Intellectuals, Media, and the Public Mind
Resource
Asian Geographer, 18(1-2), 99-109
Journal
Asian Geographer
Pages
99-109
Date Issued
1999
Date
1999
Author(s)
Hsiao, Hsin-Huang Michael
Tseng, Hua-Pi
Abstract
Abstract We investigate how intellectuals and the media have helped to shape Taiwan's contemporary environmental consciousness through their discursive interactions with the public mind over the past three decades. The intellectuals have always been the most influential social class in leading new social thinking and reform, and have done so in awakening environmental consciousness. As a crucial force in bringing in sources of new information, the media, especially newspapers, have worked to inform the public of the emerging environmental problems facing Taiwan. Public opinion surveys indicate a shift in the public's environmental consciousness over the course of the 1980s and 1990s. Each of these elements—intellectuals, media, and public opinion—is a constituent of a new social consciousness.
Type
journal article