Pollution Stories

Research

Project Objectives

To develop an empirically informed understanding of how the lockdown and its environmental implications have been narrativized in the Indian public sphere by institutional news media

To examine the strategic aims of Indian environmental research and advocacy organisations and how they mobilise storytelling in communications with their publics and policy-makers

To enhance the storytelling capabilities of India environmental research and advocacy CSOs to enable them to more effectively achieve their strategic aims in reducing air pollution in the post-pandemic context

To develop and apply a participatory approach to ethical and context-specific environmental storytelling

These objectives translate into a three-stranded programme of work outlined below.

Workpackage 1:

Media study

Analysis of Indian newspaper’s coverage of air pollution to answer the following questions:

How has Indian news media represented the relationship between the pandemic and air pollution? What stories are being told? What environmental futures are being envisaged in these stories?

Workpackage 2:

Analysing advocacy around air pollution

Analysis of the communicative strategies of civil society organisations involved in advocacy around air pollution to answer the following questions:

How have civil society organisations (CSOs) involved in research and advocacy around air pollution adapted their aims and public communications in the context of the pandemic? What kind of storytelling approaches have they adopted and why?

Workpackage 3:

Co-creating new enviornmental narratives

This work package involves co-creation of environmental narratives through documentary film-making. As part of this work package representatives of CSOs involved in WP2 and teams of selected young filmmakers will be brought together to develop three short documentary films (10 minutes duration), under the guidance of the research team and experienced documentary filmmakers.