Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

National parks are legally tasked to create awareness about the responsible treatment of
nature and instruct environmental education. At the same time they hold a unique position
to create meaning for an interested and positive audience. Nevertheless the communication
in guided tours focus on conveying only the national park mission and does not
emphasize environmental protection, or sustainable development. Thus the potential of
raising environmental awareness within guided tours in national parks is not being explored
to its full extent. This thesis aims at describing how the guided tours in German national
parks are designed and conceptualized in order to explain why sustainable development
does not play an important role in the communication strategies of national parks.
The theoretical base of the investigation is Symbolic Interactionism, leading the research
to investigate key communicators in national parks through in-depth interviews. Social objects,
which influence and lead the communicators when designing guided tours, are extracted
and interpreted through a content analysis. The research concludes in identifying
the main variables influencing the design of guided tours; the perspective of the national
park the communicators take when designing the tours inhibits them from taking the interpretation
of the law further. Their identified cybernetic understanding of communication
does not facilitate planning and development of a mutual and jointly dialogue between
tour guides and visitors. The usage of Nature Interpretation as main concept for guided
tours makes them adhere to the phenomenon on site.