Enhancing the Environmental Awareness of the Audience Through Media With Emphasis on television (Case Study of Tehran Citizens)

Environmental awareness has been among the issues of the researchers’ interest in recent years. In Iran, despite unfavorable environmental indices, increasing public awareness and strengthening the sense of nature-loving can be effective in reducing the corresponding harms. One of these sources of information is the media among which, television can play an influential role. Therefore, the goal of this study is to examine the effect of television programs on increasing the environmental awareness of Tehran citizens. The study is a survey and its statistical population includes 18-year-old citizens in the 22 districts of Tehran. According to Cochran's formula, the sample size is 384 indicated via a two-stage cluster sampling method and SPSS software was used to analyze the data. The reliability of the questionnaire was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and was determined to be 0.83. Correlation, T, Levene and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to analyze the data. According to the findings, 61.5% of the respondents learn about the environment through television and the highest audience number belongs to Channel 3 with 82.6%. Also, in examining the relationship between watching TV programs and gaining knowledge in the dimensions of “information giving” and “environmental knowledge”, the correlation coefficient values were 0.382 and 0.374, respectively, which confirms the existence of a significant relationship. In sum, both dimensions explain the impact of the media on awareness raising but in order to be more effective, it is expected that necessary policies are made in the national media (IRIB), especially in IRIB’s TV, to produce programs on the subject of environment in popular channels with the approach of strengthening environmental knowledge.