“These Bottles Didn’t Get Here by Themselves”: An Analysis of Television Intervention Programs Concerning Illegal Dumps in Urban Spaces

Abstract

This article addresses the issue of creating urban spatial disorder through the deposition of waste in unauthorized locations. The analysis encompasses social practices related to littering, abandoning trash, and the creation of illegal dumps, as well as remedial actions undertaken by various institutional entities responsible for maintaining cleanliness and order in the municipality, and interventions undertaken by local media and residents. As part of the project titled “Illegal Dumping: Creating Social Order and Disorder in Urban” (2023/51/B/HS6/02545), researchers analyzed 54 media intervention programs from Toya Television addressing this issue, aiming to answer the following questions: 1) “which entities (individual, collective, institutional) are involved in the problem of illegal dumping?”; 2) “what relationships exist between these entities?”; 3) “what causes of this problem are identified in local media, and what solutions are proposed?”; and, finally, 4) “what aspects of the phenomenon are omitted in media discourse?”. The researchers consider the role of green spaces in the city in the context of the location of spaces of disorder. Finally, they undertake a methodological reflection on the status of the collected data and the relationship between the codes and analytical categories generated on the basis of media intervention programs in relation to the described social reality.