Raising Awareness About the Media and Environmental Issues
What's the carbon footprint of your smartphone? Rahul Mukherjee’s “Environmental Media” class looks at how different types of data-driven activities affect the earth’s geology and ecosystems. It also explores the media’s depiction of environmental issues and controversies involving media infrastructures, such as cellphone towers and the possible effects on the health of nearby residents.
Mukherjee, Dick Wolf Assistant Professor of Television and New Media Studies, says many people aren’t aware that their appetites for data via computers, cellphones, and other electronic devices have environmental implications.
“Think about the carbon footprint of a Facebook ‘like’ or binging on NetFlix,” says Mukherjee. “Cloud computing is not soot-free.”
Millions of gallons of water and huge amounts of electricity are used by companies each year for air conditioning systems to cool data servers.
“It requires a significant amount of coal that’s burned,” says Mukherjee. “Sometimes it’s alternative fuels, and sometimes it’s nuclear. In a number of cases it can be fossil fuels that are used to power these servers.”
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