Communication between mothers and children about environmental issues (a study about the role of mothers to educate their children on keeping a clean environment)

Department of Communication Science, FISIP Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: chandra.kirana@ui.ac.id

Abstract

For the last two decade, many studies about environmental issues show that interpersonal communication plays an important role. Interpersonal communication is very useful and strategic to involve people to take part on this issue, particularly on how people deal with waste management (how to keep a clean environment). By using interpersonal communication approach at the micro level, this can lead us to identify and understand more about the whole elements of communication process (communicator, receiver, message, medium (channel), and effect) when we need to deal with the environmental issues. Based on what I observed about the communicator’s role in this paper, I argue that mothers have significant role to educate their children to keep a clean environment. This paper aims to explain the role of mothers on how they educate the children to keep a clean environment. This study use in-depth interview to 5 mothers who have children in Jakarta, Bogor, Depok. The data will be analyzed by thematic analysis. The findings indicate, to educate the children about keeping a clean environment, mothers needs to communicate interpersonally by using some examples, personal experiences, personal values, and certain media to discuss about this issue to their children.