There are three main areas to do with the technological and media sides of the Australian bush fires, these are the global media coverage, the use of technology to help deal with the fires and also the fake news aspect where some media outlets gave out misinformation of the situation to help promote there own ideas and goals.

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Arguably the biggest media impact of the Australian bush fires was the vast amount of fake news spread about them. Fake news is mainly used in more social media based news aspects and is a form of sometimes deliberate misinformation that is used to normally either to degrade the reputation or image of a person or topic, or is used as ‘clickbait’ which means that the purpose is to get as many people to visit their site as possible through headlines or articles that are made to attract as many people as possible. [1] The fake news for the Australian bush fires ranged from Islamic state causing it, Chinese Billionaires using lasers to clear space for new cities, it being deliberately cleared to make room for a new high speed railway, and then also some media outlets calling the fires fake news itself by saying such things as its not climate change causing it but is instead an act of deliberate arson, or Environmentalists are making it up to gain support from the rest of the world. This had quite a negative impact on the Australian bush fires as it caused people to both doubt the severity and existence of them which stopped the Australian government receiving all the aid they could have done as a moderate percentage of the global population were tricked by fake news. [2]

The use of technology in aiding with fighting the fires

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The use of technology was used to great effect to help with the bush fires in one of the first cases of firefighters being assisted by it. The uses ranged from simulations such as a virtual reality where the firefighter is given a head-mounted virtual reality display and also heat pads to simulate the temperatures of a real fire. This is a very important use of technology to help to deal with bush fires as it allows them to get as close to the real thing as possible which can lend them that experience needed when the time comes for a real one. Another use of technology is the use of camera imaging to map out the wildfires. This was done by drones, satellites and helicopters and allowed the firefighters to clearly see the extent of the blaze and which parts of it were the ones that needed priority. [3]

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The Australian bush fires had global media coverage with many different nations reporting it as a massive global emergency. This was because of the effects it had on places in the world outside of Australia such as the cloud of smoke traveling more than a thousand miles to reach New Zealand. It also released an estimated 400 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere to affect climate change which is both one of the main reasons why these fires started and will make it more likely for it to happen again. The global effect of this causes mass media coverage, as even if you were on the other side of the planet such as the artic you would still feel the repercussions such as climate change causing a rise in temperature. The media coverage was both positive and negative in response as there were cries for global action to help fight the fires and, the blaming of various groups for the fires and questioning if they were even real. This meant that there was global aid sent to Australia, such as New Zealand sending around 200 firefighters or celebrities donating and raising money to help with the costs to fight them. [4]

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One of the biggest impacts the Australian bush fires had was its global impact, whether this be the environmental effect, the political side or calls to action across the globe, without technology it would have been very contained to Australia alone which would have made the overall result of the fires much more severe as there would have been nowhere near as much global aid for Australia. It also allowed the world to see the effect of climate change for themselves on a large scale.

 

References

[1]  S. Jang and J. Kim, “Third person effects of fake news: Fake news regulation and media literacy interventions,” Computers in Human Behaviour, vol. 80, pp. 295-302, 2018.

[2]  M. Balmas, “When Fake News Becomes Real: Combined Exposure to Multiple News Sources and Political Attitudes of Inefficacy, Alienation, and Cynicism,” Communication Research, vol. 41, pp. 430-454, 2014.

[3] P. Gothard, “Fighting fire with data: Peter Gothard reports on how Scotland's new centralised fire and rescue service is harnessing data visualisation technology to ensure it operates at maximum efficiency.,” Computing, p. 10, 2013.

[4]  D. Anderson, P. Chubb and M. Djerf-Pierre, “Fanning the Blame: Media Accountability, Climate and Crisis on the Australian “Fire Continent”,” Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, vol. 12, no. 7, pp. 928-941, 2018.

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