Environmental Assessment of E-media Solutions: Challenges Experienced in Case Studies of Alma Media Newspapers

DOI

10.2991/ict4s-14.2014.2How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Life cycle assessment (LCA); electronic media; new media solutions; data; methodological choices; user behaviour; communication.

Abstract

The rapid and continuous development of information and communication technology (ICT) in society today is providing new means for various societal activities. To facilitate that new ICT solutions reduce environmental impacts and bring social improvements the potential impacts of those new solutions should be assessed. One way of making environmental assessments is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This paper presents and discusses challenges in assessing, comparing, communicating and acting on the results of an LCA of traditional media products and of new ICT solutions for media products, based on case studies of three newspapers in their printed and online versions. The case studies revealed the complexity in assessment and comparison of online and printed newspapers due to differences in functions and characteristics, choice and availability of data (specific and generic data, data gaps and quality), methodological choices (functional unit, allocation, scope) and assumptions on reader profile. Often no single answer can be given regarding the best option from an environmental perspective, leading to challenges in communicating the results to different stakeholders. A particular challenge is how to combine easily communicated messages with robust, transparent background information.

Copyright

© 2014, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yevgeniya Arushanyan
AU  - Åsa Moberg
AU  - Minna Nors
AU  - Catharina Hohenthal
AU  - Hanna Pihkola
PY  - 2014/08
DA  - 2014/08
TI  - Environmental Assessment of E-media Solutions: Challenges Experienced in Case Studies of Alma Media Newspapers
BT  - Proceedings of the 2014 conference ICT for Sustainability
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 11
EP  - 19
SN  - 2352-538X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/ict4s-14.2014.2
DO  - 10.2991/ict4s-14.2014.2
ID  - Arushanyan2014/08
ER  -