University of Lisbon, Center for Comparative Studies
Abstract
Contemporary media allow digital environments to function as transnational classrooms, a multidimensional public sphere accessible to people with Internet connection. This generates ethical dilemmas, including the right to represent groups with incomplete civic rights and restricted access to representational centers. James Cameron’s Avatar (2009)–Amazon Watch–International Rivers (Amazon Watch, n.d.) marriage responds to this phenomenon through uses of digital communication as both profitable enterprise and activist means. The film narrated the interplanetary corporate destruction of another moon’s—Pandora—ecosystem and civilization for its natural resources. But in search of interesting locales to photograph, Avatar’s computer generating image professionals stumbled upon the tribes of the Amazonian rainforest whose culture and livelihood face extinction due to a government-backed multibillion project to build the Belo connexions • international professional communication journa
