Portraying the Water Crisis in Iranian Newspapers: An Approach Using Structure Query Language (SQL)

Abstract

Water is a valuable resource for which demand often exceeds supply in dry climates. Managing limited water resources becomes increasingly difficult in circumstances of recurring drought, rising populations, rapid urbanisation, industrial development, and financial constraints, such as occur in Iran. Newspapers both report on and influence people’s understanding of water-related issues. An analysis was undertaken of two major Iranian daily newspapers over a 7-year period. Structure Query Language (SQL) was employed to identify relationships among a total of 1275 records/fields which were extracted from 84 water-related news items. They were analysed for message, contributor, spatiality and allocated space. Of the water-related items, wetlands comprised 33% (class), public awareness 54% (message), local level 56% (spatiality), and authorities 53% (contributor). Space allocation on each page was mostly <40% (94% of items). Four examples were highlighted of ambitious engineering projects adopted in response to water distribution issues. It is concluded that the general lack of educating messages about water use efficiency in rural areas and water consumption in cities does not assist in developing positive water-saving local behaviours. Newspapers could be a useful tool in a broader strategy for addressing and managing the demand side of the water crisis in Iran.

Wildlife and Newspaper Reporting in Iran: A Data Analysis Approach

“…Researchers (with 14% share) were not the main contributors in writing wildlife articles for the sampled newspapers. Similarly, it was found that researchers had the lowest contributions in writing general ‘environmental’ news items (10%) [ 52 ] and ‘water’ news items (9%) in Iranian newspapers [ 59 ]. These findings are in accordance with those reported by Rust [ 61 ], who found that academics did not show interest in writing news on the human–wildlife conflict in Namibia (2% share).…”

“…Educating: the lowest numbers of wildlife items in our sampled newspapers were related to the message described as educating. In earlier research on ‘general environmental’ and ‘water’ news items, it was noted that the educating news items were the lowest, with 9% [ 52 ] and 2% [ 59 ], respectively. Media outlets must play a role as educators as part of their essential functions [ 19 ], though they must be treated with caution when considered for public education about wildlife [ 23 ].…”

“…Globally, a variety of measures are used in media analyses, such as article coding [ 56 ], framing (e.g., [ 57 ]), or content analysis (e.g., [ 58 ]). These existing approaches cannot establish links between unrelated fields [ 59 ]. In our research, the prepared database was exported into a SQL-based database management system, and various queries were made based on the rules of a relational database management system.…”

Sustainability of Wetlands in the Eyes of the New Generation of Environmental Engineering Students

“…Queries are essential mechanisms for users who are consulting database systems [38]. A similar method had been used before to examine the role of newspaper articles in transmitting environmental news to the public [39][40][41], and searching for thematic areas of research on land degradation and desertification at the global level [42].…”

A Review of Documentation: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective

“…However, compared to other groups, they may have less inclination to be involved in this medium. Analysis of Iranian newspapers, for example, showed that researchers had the lowest share in writing on topics related to general environmental issues (10%) and water (9%) [34,35]. This low participation of researchers is more or less the same elsewhere in the world.…”