Environmental pollution and its relationship to the media and the law: Awareness of the dialectics of the complementary relationship

Abstract

       The study addresses social awareness of the phenomenon of environmental pollution in urban society. A field study was conducted in the city of Baghdad, the capital of the Republic of Iraq. The study aims to identify social awareness of environmental pollution and the causes leading to its occurrence, as well as the role of the media, especially environmental media, in educating the public about environmental culture and raising awareness of its social, health, and developmental risks. The position of civil law in determining the perpetrator's responsibility, forcing him to compensate, and confronting the effects of pollution within the framework of civil liability for environmental pollution damage, especially since there are problems with civil liability for pollution damage, in determining the legal basis for this responsibility about error and damage The researcher used four scientific methods in the study: the descriptive method, the historical method, the comparative method, and the social survey method. The study used a stratified random sample, as the research population was divided into three classes of society: the upper class, the middle class, and the popular class. A percentage of (2%) was drawn from each class, and we obtained a sample consisting of 481 respondents from male and female heads of households. The study reached a set of conclusions, including, but not limited to, that the wars experienced by Iraqi society are a major reason for increasing the severity of environmental pollution and that environmental pollution has led to the emergence of serious diseases such as physical and congenital deformities, as well as social and psychological diseases, especially individual indifference and weakness. loyalty and belonging to the community. The study also concluded that the Iraqi media is weak at creating social-environmental awareness among the public about the culture of the environment and pollution. In light of the conclusions reached by the study, recommendations and proposals were made, most notably the importance of the family educating its children about the dangers of environmental pollution, the necessity of developing school curricula concerned with environmental education for all educational levels, publishing media messages concerned with social awareness of the environment, and simplifying them to spread environmental awareness to all segments of society.