Social World Sensing Via Social Image Analysis from Social Media
PART II PART 2: PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT 115 22 TRANSNATIONAL META-NARRATIVES AND PERSONAL STORIES OF PLASTICS USAGE AND MANAGEMENT VIA SOCIAL MEDIA Shalin Hai-Jew 117 118 PLASTICS USAGE AND MANAGEMENT Abstract Daily, people interact with plastic, a human-made material that may last for generations in the soils, the air, and the water, with health effects on humans, animals, and the environment. What are the transnational meta-narratives and personal stories of plastics on social media—on (1) a mass-scale digitized book corpus term fre- quency search, (2) social video sharing site, (3 and 4) two social image sharing sites, (5) a crowd-sourced online encyclopedia, (6) a social networking site, (7) a microblogging site, and (8) a mass-scale search term analysis based on time-based associations with correlated search terms? This work samples macro-scale stories of innovation (biodegradable plastics, bacteria that consume plastics), of lowering consumption, of plastic collection and recycling, of skimming the oceans of dumped plastics, and of mass-scale public awareness. There are also countervailing narratives of high consumption, resulting in overflowing landfills, plastics dumping on mountains and in rivers, and microplastics in people’s bodies. Key Words Post-Consumer Plastics, Recycling, Plastics Management, One Health, Microplastics, Social Media, Transnational Meta-Narra- tives, Transnational Personal Stories PLASTICS USAGE AND MANAGEMENT 119 Introduction Humanity is said to live in the current Plastic Age (Yarsley & Couzens, 1945, as cited in Cózar, et al., July 15, 2014, p. 10239). Indeed, plastic is ubiquitous and a part of daily life for most peo- ple around the world.
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