University of Athens, Greece)

Abstract: Environmental Education (EE) is considered vital for cultivating the environmental awareness of citizens. Mass Media are one of the main sources of information on environmental issues and, therefore, can be used for achieving the goals of EE, especially the cultivation of pro-environmental behaviors. However, traditional Mass Media in Greece lack scientific precision and don’t interact with their public; Internet and electronic media have managed to cover these deficiencies in a great degree. This paper aims to illustrate the impact of news sites, news broadcasts, newspapers’ front pages on natural disasters. This work is a quantitative study of news sites, news broadcasts, newspapers’ front pages covering the megafire of Mati Attica, Greece in 2018, which caused a big number of human losses, along with the forest and infrastructure destruction. The quantitative analysis lays emphasis on the frequency, tone, and consistency of the media coverage and its relationship with available scientific knowledge.

Key words: environmental education, environmental journalism, environmental communication, social media, news sites, Mati megafire