The role of regional media in covering environmental issues (On the example of the Republic of Tatarstan)

Abstract

© 2019, Dorma Journals. All rights reserved. The mass media play a decisive role in shaping of public opinion, including the environmental issues. This problem is relevant not only due to its extreme aggravation in the system of “nature-society”, the need to improve the effectiveness of the state environmental policy, including the information support, but also due to the unprecedented changes in media space. The transition from traditional to new media in the 1990s, the further global spread of the Internet, and the digitization of communication messages have led to fundamental changes in media sphere. The Internet has connected many users-individuals, organizations, media into a single, open communication network, creating the unlimited number of connections, reducing the distance between network participants, eliminating spatial restrictions. The new level of communications has been formed. It has changed not only the access of consumers to information, but also the interaction with it. Mass media became a powerful tool for the purposeful formation of social orders, mainly through the building of necessary public relations, including the ecological issues. They influence a number of processes, from formal environmental policy to informal views of the public on the current state of environment (1-4). In this regard, the study of coverage of environmental problems and the measures of government, aimed for their solving, in mass media is an important task in scientific, practical and political sense. The article presents the research results of the role of regional media in covering the environmental issues, in determining the effectiveness of information support of the government environmental protection policy.