Rationale & Initial Research

How can popular culture be used as a tool for environmental and social change?
With a focus on globalisation exploiting cultures, the mass media and technologies effect on body image ideals, and ways that climate change has and can promote a positive agenda through use of mainstream media outlets. 

(using design)

COP 2 rationale
What do I want to explore?

What positive and negative effects is it actually having on society and could it be used as a tool for environmental and social change. With climate change becoming more and more of a significant issue, and with the rise of right in prominent countries like the USA disregarding environmental protection at the cost of economic gain, could the mass media and commercial culture be used as an outlet to promote change, as is already starting to happen.

Touched in towards the end of my COP 1 investigation, celebrity involvement has already contributed to raising awareness for environmental issues, as well as musicians who sing about it, and TV documentaries and films that expose it to a mass audience. 

Globalisation

1. “Time space compression brings into close contact images, meanings, ways of life, cultural practices, which would otherwise have remained separated by time and space. This can produce a certain homogeneity of cultural experience or resistance in defence of a previous way of life, or it can bring about a mixing of cultures, producing forms of “hybridization.” Nor should hybridization be seen as another name for coping with cultural imperialism; western societies also absorb and adopt cultural practices from elsewhere.” - John Storey 
2. “Globalisation is the name given to the complex relations which characterise the world in the twenty-first century. It refers to the relentless global flow of capital, commodities, and communications across increasingly porous territorial boundaries. National borders are becoming less and less important as transnational corporations existing everywhere and nowhere, do business in a world economy.” - John Storey 

• Globalisation spreads western ideals creating a ‘mass culture’
• McDonalds diversifying their meals to appeal to different consumers
• http://uk.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-international-menu-items-2015-7/#donalds-indias-veg-pizza-mcpuff-1
• People are willing to pay more for healthier food with exposure to the truth behind junk food in western countries becoming more prevalent - thus with populist exposure to issues in developing world, this could happen there also - 'Most fast food restaurants are introducing menu items which are healthier, preservative-free, and do not contain artificial ingredients. McDonald’s has been the front runner in these menu innovations, and the company is trying to transform itself from a “junk food” destination to a healthier fast food establishment.' https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/05/23/how-restaurants-are-benefiting-from-introducing-healthier-menu-options/#605db90e41da
• Accommodating culture - white western values being presented as idealistic to the developing world, big TNCs infiltrating these areas by exploiting their ignorance to health benefits within the food, causing great issues with these areas
• Vice: "As Americans become increasingly health-conscious and junk food sales plateau in the States, fast food companies are spreading to new global markets, expanding their revenue — and the waistlines of their customers" 
• Problem in Kuwait - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yp7bem/fast-food-delivery-is-the-strangest-new-fad-in-kuwait 
• Could it be used by a healthier organisation
• "According to the IDF, nearly 70% of type two cases can be prevented or delayed by adopting healthier lifestyles." http://edition.cnn.com/2015/03/26/health/middle-east-obesity-diabetes-epidemic/index.html
• "Latest World Health Organisation figures show 66 per cent of men and 60 per cent of women in the UAE are either overweight or obese, the latter of which is defined as having a body mass index greater than 30." Nick Webster 2/11/16 The National UAE

Mass Media

"no-one lives in a bubble of self-generated "dysfunction" or permanent immunity- especially today as mass media culture increasingly has provided the dominant "public education"in our children's lives." (Bordo, 2004)

Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body

By Susan Bordo 

1. “...idealized notions of both masculine and feminine bodies have a long history that shifts considerably across time, racial or ethnic group, class, and culture. Body ideals in 20th century North America are influenced and shaped by images from classical ‘high’ art, the discourses of science and medicine, and increasingly via a multitude of commercial interests, ranging from mundane life insurance standards to more high-profile fashion, fitness, and entertainment industries.” – Jaqueline Urla & Alan C. Swedlund

• According to new data from the University of New South Wales and Macquarie University, as little as half an hour a day spent trawling Instagram can make women fixate negatively on their weight and appearance. The study, which drew on survey results from 350 Australian and American women aged 18-25, found that the more participants looked at so-called “fitness inspiration” images or compared themselves to celebrities such as Kendall Jenner or Karlie Kloss, the unhappier they felt about their own bodies. https://nypost.com/2017/09/04/instagram-can-wreck-positive-body-image-in-just-30-minutes/
• http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/19/health/instagram-worst-social-network-app-young-people-mental-health/index.html
• How Do “Body Perfect” Ideals in the Media Have a Negative Impact on Body Image and Behaviors? Factors and Processes Related to Self and Identity Helga Dittmar  
• http://faculty.ycp.edu/~swaddell/professional/cloudywatersports_/cloudywatersports_/Body%20Image.pdf
• For women, an earlier meta-analysis of 25 experimental studies found that they felt worse about their body after exposure to thin ideal images than other stimuli, identifying an effect size of d = -.31 (Groesz, Levine, & Murnen, 2002).A recent extension included 49 experiments and 28 correlational studies, again finding that exposure to thin ideal media is linked to women’s body image concerns, with effect sizes of d = -.28 for body dissatisfaction and d = -.30 for eating behaviors and beliefs (Grabe et al., 2008).

• The Internet has ushered a change in media habits, particularly for millennials who have never experienced life without digital technology. For example, the mass adoption of mobile media devices (e.g., tablets, cell phones, and laptops) has created a “bedroom culture” in which millennials partake in highly personalized and private media worlds (Livingstone, 2002).
• The Pew Research Center defines millennials as individuals born between 1981 and 1997 (Fry, 2016).
• This shift in media is further compounded by the rise of social network sites (SNS) and other online venues that enable individuals to construct and display their identities while interacting with other network members (boyd and Ellison, 2007). The enlarged sense of media personalization and tendency to use the Internet for social purposes has led many millennials to become increasingly invested in developing an idealized online self that they can present to the world (Gonzales and Hancock, 2011).
• Body image refers to the perceptions and attitudes that individuals hold about their own bodies in relation to larger cultural expectations (Davison and McCabe, 2005).
• Body image is important because it entails making social and cultural comparisons that might feed into a person’s sense of physical attractiveness and larger self-worth (Cash, 2002).
• Although body image is important for both men and women, objectification theory (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997) asserts that women are more likely to be seen as physical and sexual objects whose social value can be inferred from bodily appearance. As such, women are more likely to engage in forms of self-objectification that confirm the sense of connection between their physical bodies and their sense of self-worth.
• approximately half of American girls aged 11–16 report being unhappy with their body image (White and Halliwell, 2010)
• Individuals who possess a poor sense of body image are also more likely to develop mental and physical issues such as eating disorders (Dittmar, 2009)
• Mass media is often cited as a culprit behind the growing trend of body dissatisfaction among young women (Dittmar, 2009). Mass media tends to portray women of below average thinness, and retouches and airbrushes their subjects until they reach unrealistically perfect levels of physical beauty (Hass, et al., 2012). Young women might develop body image issues if they compare themselves to social norms of beauty as displayed in these media representations (Bergstrom, et al., 2009). Indeed, the viewing of idealistically thin physical media models has been found to correlate with negative body image.
• https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6390/5620

Mass consumerisms effect on the environment:

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1964887/
• 'Globalization has made it possible to produce clothing at increasingly lower prices, prices so low that many consumers consider this clothing to be disposable. Some call it “fast fashion,” the clothing equivalent of fast food.'
• Yet fast fashion leaves a pollution footprint, with each step of the clothing life cycle generating potential environmental and occupational hazards. For example, polyester, the most widely used manufactured fiber, is made from petroleum. With the rise in production in the fashion industry, demand for man-made fibers, especially polyester, has nearly doubled in the last 15 years, according to figures from the Technical Textile Markets. The manufacture of polyester and other synthetic fabrics is an energy-intensive process requiring large amounts of crude oil and releasing emissions including volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and acid gases such as hydrogen chloride, all of which can cause or aggravate respiratory disease. Volatile monomers, solvents, and other by-products of polyester production are emitted in the wastewater from polyester manufacturing plants. The EPA, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, considers many textile manufacturing facilities to be hazardous waste generators.
• China has emerged as the largest exporter of fast fashion, accounting for 30% of world apparel exports, according to the UN Commodity Trade Statistics database. In her 2005 book The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, Pietra Rivoli, a professor of international business at the McDonough School of Business of Georgetown University, writes that each year Americans purchase approximately 1 billion garments made in China, the equivalent of four pieces of clothing for every U.S. citizen.
• After war - by the mid-1920s consumerism was back in style. Industrialisation grew in the 20th century, providing the means of increased production of all consumer goods. 
• Industrialization brought consumerism with it as an integral part of the economy. Economic growth came to depend on continued marketing of new products and disposal of old ones that are thrown away simply because stylistic norms promote their obsolescence.
• https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/jul/29/fashion-must-fight-scourge-dumped-clothing-landfill 
• A UK-based fashion company tells its buyers to remember that a dress will stay in the owner’s wardrobe for only five weeks.
• how can bring about change using pop culture: Vivienne Westwood – never one to miss an opportunity to call her legion of fans to action – thinks we can. “It’s about quality, not quantity – not landfill,” she said recently at one of her own shows. Hot on her heels, Vetements, very much the “it” brand of our times, made its own statement last week. The label filled the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue in New York – one of the commercial hotspots of global fashion retail – not with its latest collection, but with waste garments en route to a recycling charity.
• Stella McCartney shot her the advertisement for her latest fashion campaign AW17 in a Scottish landfill site advocating ethical and environmental clothing. "The idea we had with this campaign is to portray who we want to be and how we carry ourselves; our attitude and collective path," said McCartney. "Our man-made constructed environments are disconnected and unaware of other life and the planet, which is why there is waste."
• Since 2005, Portland Fashion Week has been featuring sustainable designers‟ works in apparel. An increasing number of Hollywood celebrities have been associated with Sustainable And Ethical Fashion: The Environmental And Morality Issues DOI: 10.9790/0837-20811722 www.iosrjournals.org 18 | Page sustainable Fashion like Natalie Portman, Cameron Diaz, Alicia Silverstone, Jennifer Aniston, Selma Hayek, Jade and Jess.
• Last year 1,130,000 tonnes of new clothing was purchased in the UK – an increase of 200,000 tonnes since 2012.
• Providing one tonne of clothing for direct re-use by giving it to a charity shop or selling it online can result in a net greenhouse gas saving of 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
• Extending the life of a garment by an extra nine months reduces its environmental impact by 20-30%.
• Fashion in the UK lasts an average of 3.3 years before a garment is discarded.
• minimalism documentary - fashion mogul which threw out unsold clearance clothing was cut and shredded after being trashed, to avoid others from using or reselling the unsold clothes

Climate Change

1. “Currently,NBC categorizes its viewership based on their favorite shows and their level of concern about the environment. For example, “Alpha ecos” are considered to be women, who drive hybrids, eat organic and watch the Bravo channel, while “eco-logicals” are older viewers with Midwestern values, drink diet coke, drive domestic cars and watch basic-cable...By showing television characters “doing good” can not only enhance viewers’ feelings about the show but potentially sell more environmentally friendly products and services.” (Chozick, 2010) 
   

Celebrities who use their status and platform to promote these causes to their mass followings

•  Using celebrities can help companies to create unique ads and engender a positive effect on the attitude and sales intention towards the brand (Ranjbarian, Shekarchizade & Momeni, 2010).
• https://globaljournals.org/GJMBR_Volume11/8-Celebrity-Endorsement-And-Its-Impact.pdf
• http://arno.uvt.nl/show.cgi?fid=115680
• Leonardo DiCaprio’s Oscars acceptance speech dedicated to promoting / raising awareness on climate change - example of high profile celebrities who sue the mass media to spread trends - in this case a totally positive one
• Spread of vegetarianism and veganism as a trend 
• http://variety.com/2016/film/news/leonardo-dicaprio-oscar-speech-climate-change-1201717970/ “Making ‘The Revenant’ was about man’s relationship to the natural world, the world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in reported history — our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow,” DiCaprio said. “Climate change is real. It is happening right now. It’s the most urgent threat facing our entire species and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.”
• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/29/how-leonardo-dicaprio-oscar-climate-change-campaigner “Climate change is real, it is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating,” the actor said.

Documentaries

• The huge popularity of David Attenborough over social media, became a trend following his link to the nature documentaries that took the nation by storm
• He speaks about how the growth in technology (over 10 years) has promoted and appealed to more people, with the HD shots / musical composition/ entire design 
• It is accordingly having a huge impact on politics - budget 2017 - raising awareness and at the same time growing emotional attachments between viewer and the subject of the show, allows for a greater acceptance of these environmental protection laws to be put in place; http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/budget-2017-air-pollution-philip-hammond-plastic-tax-clean-measures-statement-environment-a8069946.html
• https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/nov/06/blue-planet-ii-years-most-watched-tv-show-david-attenborough
• http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/planet-earth-2-ii-young-viewers-x-factor-bbc-itv-david-attenborough-vieiwng-figures-ratings-a7449296.html
• PE11 opening episode has now racked up 12.26 million views, absorbing 40.9 per cent of the television viewing public.
• planet Earth II...has already beaten Blue Planet in 2001, the first series of Planet Earth in 2006 and Frozen Planet in 2011.
• Planet Earth II is now the highest performing title of 2016 so far across all television, following The Great British Bake Off,  Britain’s Got Talent and the final of Euro 2016.
• more young people watched planet earth 11 than the x factor (16-34y/o bracket)
• Natural history program “Blue Planet II” has delivered epic numbers for the BBC, becoming the most-watched show of the year in Britain. The opening instalment of the show, which explores the world’s oceans, drew 14.1 million viewers. The Oct. 29 linear broadcast attracted a peak audience of 10.3 million, a 41.4% share, with the rest watching via catch-up.

Music

• music promoting the environment https://www.axs.com/the-bestmusic-videos-about-the-environment-49943
• Huge stars discussed in COP1 merging high and low brow through populist music such as Bob Dylan, the Beatles both promote environmentalism in their songs License to Kill" and "The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill" and "Mother Nature's Son"
• Joni Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi. For many people, this is the environmental song with its chorus: “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone/They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.”
• Live Earth - a one off event developed to combat CC. The first series of benefit concerts were held on July 7, 2007. The concerts brought together more than 150 musical acts in eleven locations around the world which were broadcast to a mass global audience through televisions, radio, and streamed via the Internet. The logo for the event was the Morse code distress signal. Brand Neutral, the environmental business strategy firm, served as the worldwide sustainability strategy and services partner, developing the overall sustainability strategy (HOWEVER was considered a flop in UK and US viewer ratings)
• https://eia-international.org/sounds-green-to-me-10-top-environmental-songs

• Ecomusicology: Rock, Folk, and the Environment By Mark Pedelty http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2160_reg.html Pedelty explores the political ecology of rock, from local bands to global superstars. He examines the climate change controversies of U2's 360 Degrees stadium tour—deemed excessive by some—and the struggles of local folk singers who perform songs about the environment. In the process, he raises serious questions about the environmental effects and meanings of music. Ecomusicology examines the global, national, regional, and historical contexts in which environmental pop is performed. Pedelty reveals the ecological potentials and pitfalls of contemporary popular music, in part through ethnographic fieldwork among performers, audiences, and activists. Ultimately, he explains how popular music dramatically reflects both the contradictions and dreams of communities searching for sustainability.

• "The U.K. Firm CarbonFootprint Ltd. estimated that at least 20,000 trees would need to be plated in order to even begin to offset the tours carbon emissions." - about U2s tour

Art&Design

• how art is being used as a medium to promote climate change through popular culture: http://www.ecsj2017.com/articles/climate-change-popular-culture
• Artist Yolanda Delriego and her triangulation series
• IKEA's design platform - huge populist TNC that is focusing on the design of our future 
• This summarises SPACE10’s work, tackling big, global issues with an overarching approach of creativity and what he calls “visual intelligence”. “Design can be an important tool to take big issues like climate change, pollution, and make them more visual so people can relate to them, rather than just scary headlines and big numbers,” he says.

(Fiction)

TV Seres

• Its popularity in fiction has given rise to the term cli-fi, or climate change fiction, and speculation that this constitutes a distinctive literary genre.
• Utopia is a violent thriller about a fictional conspiracy that has a number of secret agents embedded in key places in government and industry. The conspiracy, known as "The Network", seeks to frighten the populace into taking a vaccine which will, as a side-effect, cause mass infertility. Their aim in doing so is to reduce the number of humans on the planet, in order to tackle climate change, resource shortages and other environmental issues.
• South Park spoofed global warming in five episodes: "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow", "Spontaneous Combustion", "Goobacks", "Smug Alert!" and "ManBearPig".
• Star Trek: The Next Generation had three such global-warming themed episodes

1. Episode "Déjà Q" (1990) - The crew suggests an artificial amplification of global warming using greenhouse gases to counter the cooling effects of dust from the impact of a moon on a planet.
2. Episode "A Matter of Time" (Season 5 EP 9) - A passing cloud of dust from an asteroid causes global cooling on a planet, the crew of the enterprise use a phaser to release frozen deposits of CO2 on the planet.
3. "The Inner Light" (1992) - Jean-Luc Picard lives a lifetime on a planet experiencing Global Warming and aridification. Ultimately, the climate change becomes serious enough to threaten all life on the planet. This Hugo Award winner is among the 5 most popular out of all 178 episodes in the TNG series.

Film

• The University of Cologne's Professor Roman Bartosch, who specializes in "eco-criticism," studies how art and culture reflects and affects human anxieties about the planet. He's noticed an increase of and hunger for stories that express "a sense of guilt and fear that humans have inflicted upon themselves by transgressing certain limits."
• Perhaps the increase in disaster and apocalyptic films dealing with climate change is not an answer to the increase in extreme weather events, but a response to our lack of effective solutions for a problem so large that it renders audiences (and global response) numb and paralyzed. Our attempt to manipulate the narrative of climate change on screen — through a story in which the hero and the planet survive — may reflect our inability to control the colossal problem of global warming as it becomes more unwieldy in real life.
• A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), set in climate changed world near flooded ruins of New York City, where global warming has led to ecological disasters all over the world in the mid-22nd century.
• The Day After Tomorrow (2004) An abrupt shutdown of thermohaline circulation causes catastrophic climate change, plunging the Earth into a new ice age.
• https://www.upf.edu/pcstacademy/_docs/200411_environment1.pdf
• On Memorial Day weekend 2004, Twentieth Century Fox released The Day After Tomorrow, a disaster movie depicting an abrupt and catastrophic climate change. In the movie, a global warming– induced shutdown of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation system1 triggers extreme weather events worldwide and subsequently a new ice age, with wrenching global consequences. Before it even hit the theaters, however, the movie generated an intense storm of media controversy as scientists, politicians, advocacy groups, and political pundits debated the scientific accuracy and political implications of the movie and global climate change.
• https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2014/11/the-long-melt-the-lingering-influence-of-the-day-after-tomorrow/
• Blade Runner (1982) directed by Ridley Scott and set in a dystopian humid rainy climate changed Los Angeles