O produtor e o conteúdo da informação na internet: um estudo sobre o tema educação ambiental em páginas e sites brasileiros

Over the past 20 years, Internet has emerged as an efficient means to disseminate information due to its rapid and innovative way that allows the exchange of knowledge in a global perspective. Information on Environmental Education (EE) is being increasingly transmitted through different media, such as via Internet, which enables the expansion of communication and dissemination of EE knowledge, a subject that has grown remarkably in recent decades. Throughout its brief story, the term EE gained a broader meaning, encompassing not only issues of biology and health, but also issues of culture, socioeconomics, politics, pedagogy and humanism. The present study examined the type of information produced and diffused by Brazilian webpages which have been indicated, or "linked", by other webpages by the term environmental education. We used the Google search operator: allinanchor, which enabled the recovery of such webpages. Initially, we collected 837 webpages, but due to some duplication and technical problems of accessing the pages, the number of webpages analyzed was reduced to 617. These webpages were classified according to their types of domain, activity, content and social and conceptual representation. The results showed a wide involvement of the institutional spheres, named government, private sector, academia, and the third sector, which offer their initiatives and actions in EE by electronic means, including priority projects and educational programs, in which predominates the integrated vision of the relationship between man, society and environment.