UW Department of Communication Study Abroad Program in Greece

Posted: 08.30.07

Taso Lagos, director of the department's study abroad program in Greece sent us this summer update and some photos:

I hope your summer goes well and hello from Greece!

I wanted to write to you all to give you an update about our Greece program. As you know, we have two programs this summer - one on Communication and the Environment and an upcoming one on the Digital Divide in Greece. The Communication and the Environment program just concluded and the Digital Divide program is about to start.

The Comm Environment program was new this year. Students spent 5 weeks looking at media messages on the enviroment and their perception (both affective and cognitive) by ordinary citizens. The findings were presented at the Athens Enviromental Symposium on August 3, 2007.

Students spent the first 3 weeks in Athens conducting interviews with goverment, European Union, NGO and other officials, as well as with Athenian residents on the issue of media messages surrounding the enviroment. For most students, this was their first time conducting original ethnographic research and while some found it challenging at first, they warmed up to the task fairly quickly.

The following two weeks were spent in a tiny rural village on the Greek island of Euboea (the village, in fact, where I was born). Here the focus was on people's awareness of the environment, and what forces (i.e., media?) shaped those attitudes. We were startled to find a total ignorance of environmental messages, or one that was skewed towards sensationalism (i.e., the more than 3000 forest fires in Greece that decimated the nation's green spaces) and panic.

Remarkably, as a gift to the village community, the students got together and created a skit on recycling, complete with one student dressed as "Anna Kyklosi" (Greek for "recycling") in a superhero outfit. It was quite a memorable event, drawing even an official from the local township's city hall to speak.

The following week, four students (each representing their working group) shared their finding at the ATINER Symposium - I gave the opening and closing remarks to the presentation, but it was the students who shared their findings at this international environmental symposium. Students who had no idea what a scientific paper (introduction, lit review, methodology, results, discussion and conclusion) was just a few weeks prior to this event, where now addressing a room full of scientists from all over the world. It is hard not to be proud of them.

Photos