The 5th Conference on Communication, Culture and Media Studies (CCCMS)
Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 14-16 April 2019
“COMMUNICATING SPACE AND ENVIRONMENT”
The main problem of humanity now is how to build a comfortable space on Earth. Yi Fu Tuan, beautifully stated that humans ultimately produced what he called the landscape of fear in order to gain security. It has been nearly two decades when modern human beings began their journey in the 21st century, hundreds of years after leaving the ‘nomad’ stage, humans are still interwoven in the problem; how to make the earth comfortable to live in.
In Asia, for example, there are many events that illustrate how the environmental problems of humans live in the second decade of this century. Syrian conflict, expulsion of ethnic Rohingya in Myanmar, conflict in Marawi City, Philippines, and most recently; Earthquakes in Lombok, Indonesia and storms in Japan. Meanwhile, old issues such as globalization, global warming, and eviction of the population and land seizure still leave many social problems. Of course, there are many more local events that might not be exposed to the world population.
There are two important points that we draw from this problem. First is the problem of space and its derivatives (geography, place, territory, regionalization, urban spatial layout, etc). Second is environmental problems, where problems such as disasters – which humans cannot predict, climate change, global warming – become unfinished discussion topics.
At both points communication is an important instrument to talk about. Communication is not only a tool to introduce these problems more broadly so that people know and then pay attention to space and environmental problems. Communication also becomes an instrument to dominate, or vice versa, to become a tool of resistance. Communication is an important instrument in the dialectic of space and human environment problems. If, communication has stopped world war, it is not impossible, communication is able to make the earth a comfortable place to live.
