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Considering the ongoing explosive growth of wanton environmental degradation at the onset of the 21st century, many countries around the world, regardless of their economic status, are acutely aware of and have extensively explored environmental protection. Malaysia, one of the swiftest developing nations in the Southeast Asian sphere, does not want to fail in its tremendous endeavours towards environmental protection. In order to protect the environment and achieve sustainable development, environmental communication must take place, especially among the media and the environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) (Aida Nasirah, Kalthom & Noraini, 2009). The media is a great channel for distributing scientific information (Liverman, 2008), and both mainstream and entertainment media can provide an immense and substantial amount of important environmental information (Cox, 2006a), that can be referred to by other stakeholders like ENGOs and the public. In fact, as the public greatly rely on media especially the newspapers for getting the environmental information (Ogadimma & Abbas, 2015; Morse, 2016), the media is a powerful tool and a major weapon for informing public about world events and influencing public opinion and public belief (Ladle, Jepson & Whittaker 2005; Happer & Philo, 2013). Through environmental writing and reporting, it is possible to make people think that they are part of the environment and not the owners of the natural recourses who can simply continue with unsustainable exploitation (Bavadam, 2010).
Similarly, the ENGOs are prominent stakeholders in communicating environmental issues and promoting sustainable lifestyles in Malaysia. The ENGOs do not only play a highly significant role in protecting the pristine environment (Rohani et al., 2010), but they offer meaningful environmental information and materials to journalists for their reports. More importantly, the ENGOs conduct their own scientific research (Princen, Finger & Manno, 1994) and have the extensive capacity to lobby and educate people and the government about environmental issues (Princen & Finger, 1994).
Within Malaysian context, we believe that the reality of environmental problems is socially constructed by the media and the ENGOs. This argument is also accepted and supported by Hannigan (2006) in his prominent book entitled ‘Environmental Sociology’, in which he claims that the reality of environmental problems is socially constructed by numerous social actors such as reporters, advocates, researchers and many more. Meanwhile, in describing the social construction of reality, Hannigan (2006) specifically listed six vital factors of successful social constructions, including: (1) the environmental matters must have a scientific authority to validate the issues, (2) the story must have someone who can make the story interesting and popularise it, (3) the environmental matter must grab the media attention, (4) symbols and visual representations are used to dramatise the environmental matter, (5) motivation (incentive) is provided for the action of saving the environment, and (6) well-established sponsors are used for the sake of legitimacy.
The fourth factor, i.e. the use of symbols and visual images in dramatising the environmental problem, is verified by Cox (2013b) and Hall (1997), where they proposed that the importance of language and other signs (e.g. pictures), in shaping the reality of environmental problems, could also be an instrument for educating, persuading and helping people manage the environment, as discussed below. Hannigan (2006) similarly gave a specific example of how ENGOs like the Greenpeace, used a dramatic picture in communicating the deforestation in Vancouver Island, which became an international debate. Hannigan (2006) thus, stressed the power of visual images that simplify a complex topic into something that can be easily understood by everyone.