Public pays for propaganda research
A new study will give a special insight into how people react emotionally to forestry. That is – clearfelling native forests (we would have thought this was already obvious).
A joint project between Forestry Tasmania, Melbourne University and the Bureau of Rural Sciences will identify what the community thinks are acceptable ways to log native forests.
Past employee and report writer for the DSE, Rebecca Ford, is carrying out the study as part of her PhD. She says it will use virtual technology to monitor participants’ emotional response to different ways of logging, or in their preferred sanitised terms, ‘harvest systems’. They will show people eight metre wide wrap around images of a range of logged forests with ‘information’ also shown on the screen.
But if a real gut reaction is wanted, they should take a group of unprimed and unpropagandised people to a clearfell coup in process, say in the Styx or a rainforest area. Point out that every ha cleared butchers countless native animals. REAL reality is more valid than VIRTUAL reality. A PhD based on responses engineered from ARTIFICIAL stimuli has to be dodgy.
What use could this publicly funded study be, except to determine which propaganda works best on the public?