Since people posted blog posts about the impact of media, I wanted to talk about the Korean popular variety show, “Infinity challenge” and how the comedy TV show made Korea viewers to take actions toward the global warming.
On December 18, 2010, the tv show broadcasted 228th episode, “The Butterfly Effect Special.” The episode started with 2 groups of members going vocations to Maldives and the North Pole, and one member staying in his house. The members who got opportunity to go to Maldives and the North Pole, they were very excited. However, their destination was a specialized container home. The container home was divided into two layers, first floor representing Maldives, and second floor representing the North Pole. The first floor was very hot like Maldives and second floor was very cold like the North Pole.
In the beginning, the members were not notified about the building structure, and enjoyed the time in the floors they were assigned. Since, the first floor was very hot, the members put air conditioner on. It melted the ice on the second floor, the North Pole and eventually, the melted water went into the first floor, Maldives. The members did not understand the situation, and kept the air conditioner on. By the time, when they realized that they should stop using the air conditioner, a lot of the ice was already melted and the first floor was filled with water.
But, this was not the end of the episode. The one member who was left in his house also had influence on the specialized container house. The energy consumption of the member such as leaving the light on, taking a car instead of walking and etc. melted the ice in the North Pole. The behaviour of this member was very ordinary and it warned a lot of viewers.
After the TV show, many viewers commented on the variety show website that they learned the seriousness of global warming and they should take actions for it.
Later, there was news saying that the episode was supported by government as public environment campaign. I think media such as music and visual art (advertisement) have a big influence on people. And I think this episode was a great idea to approach in a very unique way and warned people about global warming.
This is really interesting! The idea of the experiment is very creative and I would like to see the show! But I don’t really get why does the melting of ice related to the Butterfly Effect. By the way, do you have a larger picture to show the structure of the building more detailed?
The butterfly effect was originally described by Ed Lorenz to illustrate chaos theory: “The flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil might cause Tornados in Texas”. The idea is that actions on one part of the planet can lead to unexpected consequences on other parts of the planet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
It’s only vaguely relevant here, in the idea that the planet’s systems are interconnected. But Lorenz originally meant it as a way of illustrating that these systems are very sensitive to changes in initial conditions – e.g. you can’t predict the weather more than a couple of weeks ahead, because tiny differences in the current state of the weather, which we can never know perfectly, magnify to large changes after a week or so. The basic effects of climate change aren’t like that:
http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/?p=1257
This is cool!
We need more shows like this for the North American Audience. It’d be a nice change from season 100 of dancing with the stars!! lol!
I think this show is making a good point! Even if some of the science behind it might be a little off, I think the overall idea was that what you do in your part of the world has a greater effect than you would think, and can be damaging places across the globe. I’m glad that it got it’s viewers into thinking about their actions and the environment!
Now off to try and find this episode and watch it~
I think they named the episode “the butterfly effect” to attract the viewers. As I mentioned, it’s not a documentary show… I think title such as incovinient truth can be too boring?
This show definitely seems to portray how humans may react too late to global warming in the future. Many people do not take global warming seriously and will only realize how serious it is after they have been negatively influenced…
Even though medias like this try to inform audience about the seriousness of global warming, I wonder how many people actually attempt to change their lifestyles to help reduce the factors of global warming…
I really like this idea, it’s a very visual way to get the impact of climate change to the masses, especially from a conservation stand point.
Like I mentioned in my own post of “Music & Climate Change”, the mass media as a method of spreading the message of fighting climate change is very effective. Lots of people pay attention to the media and feeds on it, also listens to it and believes in it as if it was a source of high authority. May it be music, TV, ads, movies, whatever medium it may be, spreading the message through it is fast and affective. To me, I don’t think the figuring out scientific answers to solve climate change will be as effective of getting the message out as soon as possible. The main issue is awareness, and this applies to all global issues.