Hyperreality, Social Media, and Increasing Opportunities for Young People to Engage with Nature

Leather, Mark (2024) Hyperreality, Social Media, and Increasing Opportunities for Young People to Engage with Nature. In: Routledge Handbook of Mobile Technology, Social Media and the Outdoors. Routledge Advances in Outdoor Studies . Taylor and Francis. ISBN 9781003367536 (In Press)

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Abstract

This chapter explores people’s engagement with nature by drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s theorising of consumption and hyperreality. Hyperreality refers to the postmodern condition of amalgamating physical and virtual realities and explains the inability of one’s consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in advanced technological postmodern societies. Baudrillard is probably best known in popular culture for his book Simulacra & Simulation which featured in, and inspired, the science-fiction action film The Matrix starring Keanu Reeves. This chapter briefly examines nature as hyperreal, the affordances offered by Instagram, and parents as consumers of the tools that enable young people’s engagement with (hyperreal) nature. Contrary to popular arguments, this chapter argues that young people’s opportunities for engagement with nature are unprecedented. This chapter explores how social media technology, specifically Instagram, offers new possibilities to appreciate nature that were not available to earlier generations. These opportunities arise from social media platforms like Instagram’s ability to magnify, capture, and share social acts and information. This chapter was developed from the original work of Leather and Gibson, The Consumption and Hyperreality of Nature: Greater Affordances for Outdoor Learning.

Item Type:	Book Section
Depositing User:	Ms Raisa Burton
Date Deposited:	15 Aug 2024 15:58
Last Modified:	15 Aug 2024 15:58
URI:	https://marjon.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/17869

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