Facebook and Mass Media: The Effective Delivery of Environmental Messages to Society

Environmental issues such as the raising global climate, pollution and the scarcity of natural resources has becoming a major concern today than it was ever before. These tribulations threaten the life of humans and other forms of life. In dealing with these problems, Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (ENGO) plays an important role to disseminate information and educate society on how to maintain and conserve environment for the betterment. This paper discusses the ENGO’s approaches to collect and disseminate messages related to environment to society in Malaysia. The objectives are to understand social interaction between ENGO’s and society; to identify and understand Facebook role in delivering environmental messages effectively. This study applied five principles of Dialogic Communication Theory introduced by Martin Buber to gauge interpersonal interaction effectiveness between ENGO’s and society. Qualitative method of in-depth interview was carried out to obtained data from twelve ENGO in Malaysia. This study concludes that majority of Malaysian ENGO do not maximize the usage of social and mass media to disseminate information related to environment. Results also indicate that Facebook remain as favorites medium for ENGO to deliver environmental messages effectively to public because of the low to zero cost expenses. By using Facebook ENGO can reach wider audiences, flexibility of the medium and most importantly high interactivity that occurred between ENGO and the general public.