This book focuses on global connectivity and the role of new digital and traditional media in bringing people together to protect the world's endangered wildlife and conserve fragile and threatened habitats. New media offers opportunities for like-minded individuals, community groups, businesses, and public organizations to learn and work cooperatively for the good of all species. One of the key themes of this book explores the important issue of how new information and communication technologies mediate the natural world and our understanding of our place in it. By exploring the role of film, television, video, photography, and the internet in animal conservation in the United States, India, Africa, Australia, and the United Kingdom John Blewitt investigates the politics of media representation surrounding important controversies such as the trade in bushmeat, whaling, and habitat destruction. The work and achievements of media/conservation activists are located within a cultural framework that simultaneously loves nature, reveres animals but too often ignores the uncomfortable realities of species extinction and animal cruelty.
Foreword by Harriet Nimmo
Preface
1. Animals in human culture
2. Animals and visual culture
3. Blue chip and beyond
4. Films for conservation
5. Image, truth and the imagination
6. A mirror to nature
References
"Blewitt conveys the abstract content in a contemplative and engaging way."
- Resource Magazine - November 2010
"It is interesting to read about the different ways in which animals are regarded in different cultures and to see good examples of films that have promoted conservation."
- The Scientific Medical Network
Dr John Blewitt is Director of Lifelong Learning at Aston University. He is author of Understanding Sustainable Development (Earthscan, 2008) and a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Commission on Education and Communication.