Efforts to stimulate public awareness of environmental issues continue to be amplified. Alternative approaches are being pursued, recognizing that understanding and embracing environmental issues is not as straightforward as it seems. This poses challenges for various stakeholders in disseminating environmental issues. Stakeholders—comprising individuals, communities, private organizations, and governments—can engage in massive campaigns to promote the urgency of recognizing environmental damage to the public. To effectively communicate environmental issues and foster public awareness, relevant and widely used modes of communication are necessary. The goal is to reach the target audience on a large scale.

Communication modes refer to how information or messages are delivered to the public. They act as essential media to bridge environmental issues, such as climate change, global warming, flooding, rising sea levels, deforestation, and more. Media as a communication mode remains a key alternative because it can reach a wide audience simultaneously. The significant advancements in technology drive media to adapt extensively in the face of information disruptions. This adaptation includes the use of social media and online platforms (websites) to align with the shift of media users toward online and social media for information needs. This presents an opportunity, considering that messages about environmental issues are becoming a topic of discourse among the public. In other words, environmental issues are now gaining focus among various groups campaigning for awareness and solutions.

Raising public environmental awareness is not only about adapting media but also employing new approaches, such as animation. Animation, as a mode of environmental communication, possesses the power of abstraction and simplification. It is deliberately used to build knowledge about ecological issues, thus helping create environmental subjectivity (Starosielski, 2011). Animation provides an impactful experience, making it crucial for educating the public on environmental awareness. By using a non-monotonous and easily understandable approach, animation enriches the audience’s insights (Mulyo et al., 2022). This type of communication is deemed effective as it combines elements such as text, graphics, and engaging visualizations. Its urgency lies in animation’s ability to simplify complex messages, helping the audience comprehend them more easily.

Animation serves as a tool for environmental communication. Like cartoons and comics, animation is used to convey environmental messages through television, films, the internet, and social media. It can educate audiences, visualize complex environmental processes, and raise awareness about environmental issues through creative and imaginative narratives. Hansen & Cox (2023) note that animation serves as a medium of social critique. For instance, animated series like The Simpsons and South Park use humor and satire to criticize environmental policies and consumerist behavior. This approach allows audiences to view environmental issues from new perspectives without feeling judged. Additionally, animation can respond to environmental crises, serving as a communication tool for crisis awareness campaigns to mitigate environmental risks.

Animation has been widely used by environmental communities or organizations in their campaigns. Its popularity as a medium for environmental communication is not new. Historically, animation was first employed in the 1960s to address environmental issues, as seen in animated films like The Bear That Wasn’t (1967), What on Earth (1967), and The Lorax (1972). Since then, animation has continued to evolve. Through various approaches, it can emphasize the importance of environmental conservation and foster public awareness. Animation is also an effective educational medium for conveying environmental values (Mulyo et al., 2022). Environmental issues mediated through animation shape public perceptions and attitudes. Animation is a rich medium for discussing and debating environmental topics. Designed to evoke emotional engagement and critical thinking about environmental destruction (such as climate change), it can deliver several benefits, including:

1. Critique through Parody: Animation critiques conventional approaches to environmental problems, emphasizing individual responsibility (e.g., reduce, reuse, recycle) while exploring alternative solutions.
2. Humor as Critical Reflection: By highlighting the disparity between expectations and reality, humor challenges standard environmental approaches, such as technical or market-based solutions often deemed inadequate.
3. Emotional Distance and Abstraction: Animation’s cartoonish and non-realistic nature enables audiences to consider environmental issues from a more abstract and emotional perspective, fostering openness to radical or systematic solutions.
4. Criticism of Mainstream Environmental Narratives: Animation critiques depoliticized mainstream narratives about environmental issues (like climate change), opening discussions on the need for deeper social, political, and economic transformations to address environmental crises.
5. Encouraging Public Discourse: Animation provokes public debates about ecological responsibility, capitalism, consumerism, and resistance to existing systems.
6. Accessible and Engaging Medium: Although often associated with children’s entertainment, animation effectively presents heavy issues like climate change in a more approachable manner, attracting a broader audience.

Animation is increasingly used to communicate abstract and complex environmental topics. It simplifies the presentation of environmental issues by integrating visualizations and graphics, reducing the cognitive burden on audiences compared to text-based communication. Moreover, animation can enhance public engagement with environmental news, sparking curiosity about the issues raised. It proves particularly effective for less familiar environmental issues, which tend to attract more public attention than well-known ones like climate change or genetically modified food (GM food) (Duan et al., 2021).

Hansen & Cox (2023) provide an example of animation as an environmental communication medium through Wall-E. This animated film portrays an apocalyptic vision of Earth’s future, where overconsumption leads to environmental destruction. Depicting a world devastated by waste and climate change, the film shows humanity forced to leave Earth due to its uninhabitable conditions. The character Wall-E, a small robot tasked with cleaning Earth’s waste, symbolizes hope and the fight to restore the environment. Wall-E combines strong visuals and emotional storytelling, entertaining audiences while conveying the importance of reducing consumption and taking responsibility for the environmental impact of human behavior. This message is delivered in a manner that resonates with diverse age groups and cultures.

-Rosmalia Ahmad

References

Duan, R., Crosswell, L., & Barber, K. (2021). Animation in Environmental Journalism: Effects on News Perception and Information Seeking. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 65(2), 205–227. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2021.1923716

Hansen, A., & Cox, R. (2023). The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication: Second Edition. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315887586

Hellmann, O. (2024). Can Rick and Morty Save the Planet? Re-Politicizing Climate Change Through Humor and Animation. Television & New Media. https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764241271200

Mulyo, P. D., Kamilawati, L. R., Widayati, S., & Setiyaningsih, L. A. (2022). Development of Care for the Environment for Early Childhood through Animated Videos. International Journal of Advances in Engineering and Management (IJAEM), 4(8). https://doi.org/10.35629/5252-0408638647

Starosielski, N. (2011). ‘Movements that are drawn’: A history of environmental animation from The Lorax to FernGully to Avatar. International Communication Gazette, 73(1–2), 145–163. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048510386746