Locating Co-presence in Media Messages about Global Warming

This paper responds to recent calls for alternative approaches to the analysis of environmental communication that uncover overlooked voices in the discussion of environmental issues. Borrowing core principles from critical rhetoric, it suggests a way to categorize media messages according to how human–nature relationships are constructed in media discourse. The paper illustrates how, in presenting contrasting and often oppositional constructions of human–nature relationships, the media messages examined articulate three recurrent (but not equal) discourses on global warming. These discourses include (1) nature-as-out-of-reach discourse, (2) nature-as-antagonist discourse, and (3) nature-as-co-present discourse. By juxtaposing these discourses, the paper shows how environmental communication scholars can engage in critical realism and political advocacy to illuminate latent public discourse that holds the potential to champion marginalized voices of nature and accentuate the interconnectedness of humans and the environment.     

Climate Engagement in a Digital Age: Exploring the Drivers of Participation in Climate Discourse Online in the Context of COP21

Various scholars underscore the importance of public engagement with climate change to successfully respond to the challenges of global warming. However, although online media provide various new opportunities to actively engage in climate discourse so far very little is known about the drivers of this form of engagement. Against this background, this study tested a theoretical model on the effects of media and interpersonal communication on participation in climate discourse online using data from a representative online survey of German citizens (n?=?1392) carried out while COP21. Overall, the results show that receiving information on climate change from social media (social networks, Twitter, blogs), active information seeking online and interpersonal conversations about COP21 strongly encourage participation in climate discourse online. Moreover, results provide relevant insights on the role of interest in climate politics, personal issue relevance and climate scepticism as preconditions of communication effects.     

Scapegoat Ecology: Blame,Exoneration, and an Emergent Genre in Environmentalist Discourse

This essay identifies and examines scapegoat ecology, an emergent genre in online environmental discourse. In scapegoat ecology, a public of environmentally minded individuals focuses attention and vitriol on a single person for being particularly harmful to the environment. This essay argues that such discourse deflects attention from more complex and systemic environmental factors and implicitly exonerates the broader community, assuring it of its own environmental commitments while excusing it from further ecological action. The essay describes the form and appeal of scapegoat ecology, then provides a series of illustrative case examples before highlighting the implications of such discourse for both environmental communication and broader social/political conversations.     

“Stop Blaming the Cows!”: How Livestock Production is Legitimized in Everyday Discourse on Facebook

In 2016, Swedish climate reporting declined in quantity and shifted focus somewhat from climate change as such to the harmful climate impacts of meat consumption. The latter prompted discussions in social media—an increasingly important forum for public debate but infrequently studied in environmental communication research. Despite strong evidence that a meat and dairy-based diet is harmful for the environment, meat consumption is increasing, and this qualitative study aims to—through the lens of social representation theory—contribute knowledge about how livestock production is legitimized in everyday discourse on Facebook. The article identifies representations that legitimize livestock production through polarization between (1) livestock production and other (environmental) issues, (2) environmentally “good” and “bad” countries, and (3) “reliable” and “unreliable” information. It concludes by discussing the influence of national ideology on the legitimization of livestock production and the potential of social media to counter the post-politicization of environmental issues.     

The Circulation of Climate Change Denial Online: Rhetorical and Networking Strategies on Facebook

This study uses a topical, rhetorical approach to analyze how climate change denial circulates online through the 25 most popular posts on the Watts Up With That and the Global Warming Policy Forum Facebook pages. These groups adopt the appearance of credibility through reposting and hyperlinking, thus establishing a supportive, networked space among other skeptical sites, while distancing readers from original sources of scientific information. Visitors use a variety of rhetorical strategies to echo posts’ main themes and to discredit alternative viewpoints. Differences between the topoi and rhetorical strategies of WUWT and the GWPF show that the climate change denial community is multifaceted and makes use of social media affordances to craft the appearance of legitimacy. This project contributes to our knowledge of how scientific information is co-opted, manipulated, and circulated in online spaces and how online features shape environmental discourse practices.     

Integrating Media Studies of Climate Change into Transdisciplinary Research: Which Direction Should We Be Heading?

Research in the area of media coverage on climate change communication represents one of the most prolific areas of inquiry within communication and mass communication studies. This body of literature, which ranges from empirical to critical studies, continues to expand. Much research has focused on representations of climate change causes, effects, and human actions, while some has assessed the impacts of these representations. What is broadly missing from this literature, however, is a discussion of how we might integrate media analysis into transdisciplinary collaborative research aimed at creating solutions to the social, environmental, and economic issues intertwined with climate change. Given the magnitude of problems the society and science are currently grasping with, it behooves us to understand how media studies can contribute most effectively to characterizing and solving problems. We maintain that the move toward integrating media studies into transdisciplinary collaborative research marks an essential transition for environmental communication in general, but climate change communication in particular, given the urgency and magnitude of creating meaningful adaptation and mitigation strategies to address this pressing, complex challenge. Drawing on our work as part of a large transdisciplinary sustainability science team, we provide a case study for understanding what collaborations are key to moving media studies into a transdisciplinary context and the key opportunities and barriers that come along with that move. We argue that media studies must increasingly engage directly in collaboration with other researchers, stakeholders, and communities to serve on-the-ground decision-making and enhance society's ability to take action.     

Blogging about Climate Change in Russia: Activism,Scepticism and Conspiracies

The article explores the new media’s role in climate change communication in Russia. By providing an open space for the expression of very diverse points of view, the internet creates a substitute media reality where both climate activists and climate sceptics can question the established discourse. Analysis of 374 entries published on the LiveJournal blogging platform has resulted in the identification of four discursive categories: “conspiracies of climate change,” “climate change impact,” “political games of climate change” and “online (anti-)environmentalism.” Each category demonstrates how the same topic can be framed in very different ways depending on bloggers’ worldview rather than the nature of the discussed environmental problem. The findings also show that the blogs act as “echo-chambers” for both climate deniers and climate activists reinforcing their behold beliefs. Finally, the analysis discovers some parallels with the traditional media coverage in their minimal critique of Russian state policy on climate.     

FORUM Communicative Action in Response to a Nuclear Crisis: Representations of Fukushima across Communication Contexts

The 2011 disaster at Japan's Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant poses important questions for environmental communication scholarship and practice. This forum examines questions that were emerging one month into the Fukushima crisis, when a panel examined its implications as part of North Carolina State University's second annual research symposium on Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (details available at http://crdm.chass.ncsu.edu/symposium2011/). Expanding those initial analyses, we identify implications across the contexts of environmental communication, expert-public engagement, public discourses of nuclear energy, uses of new media, risk and crisis communication, and organizational and institutional communication. The first essay (Kinsella) addresses some implications of Fukushima from the perspectives of constitutive communication theory, risk analysis, and risk communication. The second essay (Ionescu) examines an effort to foster dialog between technical experts and a concerned public audience, made by a nuclear energy institute in Germany. The third essay (Binder) explores uses of Twitter by people in the USA as a tool for following the rapidly evolving events at Fukushima. The final essay (Kittle Autry and Kelly) analyzes public discourse surrounding a proposed merger of two US energy companies with substantial nuclear operations, before and after the onset of the Fukushima disaster.     

Mobilizing Facebook Users against Facebook's Energy Policy: The Case of Greenpeace Unfriend Coal Campaign

This research analyzes Greenpeace International Unfriend Coal protest campaign against Facebook's energy policy (2010–2011), as a case study in the organization's approach to campaigning on climate change issues. In the context of Greenpeace protest history and social movement research, we focus on the online mobilization tactics used by Greenpeace, and how they differed from previous campaign practices. The findings are based on a content analysis of all statuses posted on the campaign Facebook page (N = 119), and six semi-structured interviews with key Greenpeace personnel. The analysis reveals that Greenpeace used Facebook extensively both for disseminating information and context about the campaign, and as a platform for mobilizing and facilitating broad public engagement. Greenpeace seized the affordances of the Facebook platform and introduced new means of online mobilization and engagement. These e-tactics proved effective for engaging diverse transnational supporters in the campaign. The implications for environmental non-governmental organizations and the broader environmental movement are discussed.     

In Flanders Fields: De/politicization and Democratic Debate on a GM Potato Field Trial Controversy in News Media

In May 2011, a highly mediatized direct action in the form of a “field liberation” took place in Flanders, Belgium, against a field trial of genetically modified potatoes. This direct action and its aftermath revealed the conflictual and antagonistic nature of the genetically modified organisms debate in Flanders. Consequently, it serves as a particularly suitable case to investigate the post-political thesis with regard to environmental discourse and politics. The aim of this paper is to investigate in what ways news media in their reporting contribute to processes of depoliticization and, resultantly, impede a democratic debate on the issues at stake. This paper attempts to provide an answer to this question based on a critical discourse analysis of the reporting by Flanders’ two generalist, elite newspapers, De Standaard and De Morgen and the alternative online news site DeWereldMorgen. The findings reveal the existence of three ideological cultures, which are characterized by different degrees of de/politicization. We conclude by discussing how this study adds to our understanding of the relation between the depoliticization of environmental discourse, democratic debate and twenty-first-century news media.     

Media and Climate Change: Four Long-standing Research Challenges Revisited

This paper suggests some further avenues of empirical and theoretical investigation for media research on climate change. “Old” suggestions, whose significance, as we see it, needs to be further reinforced, are included, as are “new” ones, which we hope will generate innovative research questions. In order to integrate the analysis with knowledge generated by media research at large, we revisit four research challenges that media scholars have long grappled with in the investigation of journalism: (1) the discursive challenge, i.e. the production, content and reception of media discourse; (2) the interdisciplinary challenge, i.e. how media research might engage in productive collaboration with other disciplines; (3) the international challenge, i.e. how to achieve a more diverse and complex understanding of news reporting globally; and (4) the practical challenge, i.e. how to reduce the theory–practice divide in media research.     

A Missed Opportunity?: NOAA’s Use of Social Media to Communicate Climate Science

In the current media landscape, organizations often communicate about science directly with publics through online channels rather than relying on journalist gatekeepers. Online platforms present organizations with the opportunity to participate in two-way communication in order to increase engagement with science. The present study examined how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) utilizes social media to interact with publics. Results suggest that NOAA does not fully utilize the dialogic potential of social media, which could enhance both the public’s science literacy and trust in science regarding climate change specifically. This study informs how public relations theory may complement science communication theory and practice as deficit model-thinking transitions to contemporary approaches for public engagement with science.     

Rapid Issue Tracking: A Method for Taking the Pulse of the Public Discussion of Environmental Policy

Environmental communication professionals and other decision makers need to understand public sentiment toward environmental issues to effectively carry out their stewardship responsibilities. However, it is often difficult to obtain timely and reliable information about public discussion and debate regarding these issues. This paper describes an approach designed to address this dilemma: Rapid Issue Tracking is a method for quickly “taking the pulse” of public and other stakeholder discussion. The data source for Rapid Issue Tracking is online media stories, including traditional news media, social media, and other textual data such as public comments received by an agency. Two US Forest Service cases of Rapid Issue Tracking are presented to explicate the method and its usefulness in environmental communication and decision making.     

Corporations,Consumerism and Culpability: Sustainability in the British Press

Sustainability and sustainable development are prominent themes in international policy-making, corporate PR, news-media and academic scholarship. Its definitions are contested, however sustainability is associated with a three-pillar focus on economic development, environmental conservation and social justice, most recently espoused in the adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. In spite of its common usage, there is little research about how sustainability is represented and refracted in public discourse in different national contexts. We examine British national press coverage of sustainability and sustainable development in 2015 in a cross-market sample of national newspapers. Our findings show that key international policy events and environmental and social justice frames are peripheral, while neoliberalism and neoliberal environmentalism vis-à-vis the promotion of technocratic solutions, corporate social responsibility and “sustainable” consumerism are the predominant frames through which the British news-media reports sustainability. This holds regardless of newspaper quality and ideological orientation.     

Energy and Sustainable Development at Global Environmental Summits: An Evolving Agenda

This paper presents a framework for understanding energy issues in the context of sustainable development. It posits that there are three important ways in which energy is related to sustainable development: (a) energy as a source of environmental stress, (b) energy as a principal motor of macroeconomic growth and (c) energy as a prerequisite for meeting basic human needs. These three dimensions correspond to the three dimensions of the often-used triangle of sustainable development: environmental, economic, and social. Using this framework, the paper traces how successive environmental summits at Stockholm (1972), Rio de Janeiro (1992) and Johannesburg (2002) have dealt with energy issues. It identifies a slow, surprising and important evolution of how energy issues have been treated at these global discussions. Energy has received increasing prominence at these meetings and become more firmly rooted in the framework of sustainable development. Stockholm was primarily concerned with the environmental dimension, Rio de Janeiro focused on both the environmental and economic dimensions, and the major headway made at Johannesburg was the meaningful addition of the social dimension and the linking of energy issues to the UN's Millennium Development Goals.     

Citizens’ perception of the resilience of Australian cities

How well does the general public understand the concept of urban resilience? We address this question via an online survey of 500+ citizens living in three large Australian cities (Sydney, Melbourne and Perth). The majority of respondents claim not to know what urban resilience means. Of the remaining respondents, understanding ranges from poor to sophisticated. To circumvent this stated lack of understanding, we cast the concept of urban resilience into a more familiar framework consisting of risk and ability to cope with threats. This allows us to assess perceptions about what may challenge the resilience of Australian cities. Two concerns clearly emerge: (1) violence and social unrest and (2) environmental threats. Analysing a number of constructs from the social psychology literature reveals that these two concerns hold different cognitive signatures, whose understanding may facilitate discussion and communication within a public engagement process.     

E-participation for environmental sustainability in transitional urban China

Using information and communication technologies (ICTs), e-participation is a tool that promotes the inclusion of the public in participative and deliberative decision-making processes, thus contributing to a transformation of the interaction between government and citizens in environmental governance and sustainable development. In a number of Chinese cities, citizens increasingly draw on ICTs to promote environmental sustainability and to encourage community-based actions aimed to address various environmental concerns. The potential success of e-participation and the role of ICTs in China has, however, not been well explored. The objective of this study is to understand the role that ICTs can play in promoting public participation about environmental sustainability issues in urban China. Based on an online survey with 630 respondents, the study aims to: (1) analyze what public motivations, perception/attitudes and actions drive environmental e-participation; (2) identify barriers to e-participation, and (3) assess the different applications and functions of ICT for citizen participation in environmental sustainability. The analysis illustrates how ICTs have helped the public to obtain sensitive information about sustainability issues, to mobilize people and to gain media coverage for their actions. The central finding is that new technologies have taken citizen engagement to new heights online. More specifically, the age of ICTs has unleashed a stronger public voice on environmental governance and sustainability issues in urban China, which does not go unnoticed by the Chinese state authorities.     

Blogging for Sustainability: The Intermediary Role of Personal Green Blogs in Promoting Sustainability

The rise of social media radically broadens the sources and platforms used for environmental communication. Especially personal green blogs are worthy of study as they are spaces of everyday cultural politics through which people make sense of sustainability issues, and because they entail a radical break from conventional media in terms of legitimacy, form, and content of environmental communication processes. This paper studies the representation of sustainability on personal green blogs, and the communication processes through which these representations are constructed. It does so through a qualitative study of Swedish-language blogs. We study three blogs in-depth: a living experiment blog on sustainable food practices; a lifestyle blog centered around green family life; and a blog about consuming green beauty products. The analysis shows that all three blogs translate the complex landscape of sustainability to individual everyday practices. Yet, what these sustainability practices entail differs considerably between the blogs, ranging from a-political and doable lifestyle choices to an onset to radical redefining of consumption. Also, the communication processes on the blogs differ in quality and quantity. The paper uses these insights to reflect on the debates about how environmental communication is shaped by blogging and social media practices.     

Economic Conditions,the Policy Cycle,and Media Visibility of Environmental Organizations

The extent to which social movements have access to the news media has important implications on the capability of social movements to communicate with and garner support from the public. Factors that shape movement organizations' media visibility thus deserve scholarly attention. This article deals with news coverage of environmental movement organizations (EMOs) in Hong Kong and focuses on the impact of economic conditions, the policy cycle, and the number of EMOs in society on media visibility of EMOs. Analysis of a data-set constructed based on archival data and official statistics illustrates that all three factors influence media visibility of EMOs through media attention to environmental issues, while the number of EMOs and economic conditions also affect media visibility of EMOs directly. In-depth interview data are then used to supplement the quantitative analysis by showing how movement activists perceive and respond strategically to the structural factors. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Overcoming Environmental Challenges by Antagonizing Environmental Protesters: The Turkish Government Discourse against Anti-hydroelectric Power Plants Movements

Due to the growing public importance of environmental concerns in the contemporary world, governments that prioritize economic interests over environmental concerns may try to counter environmental challenges not by openly declaring that they do not want to consider environmental demands, but by attempting to antagonize the protesters who voice such demands. This essay explores such a governmental response by analyzing the discourse articulated by the Turkish Government against movements that oppose the construction of hydroelectric power plants (HEPPs) on environmental grounds. In particular, the analysis focuses on how HEPPs, environmental claims and demands of movements, and environmental protesters are represented within the pro-HEPP discourse, and in what ways these representations appeal to popular perceptions. It is demonstrated that the discourse of the government attempts to counter the challenges of protesters by establishing an antagonist relation between the protesters and society by representing HEPPs as crucial for the economic development and, therefore, as compatible with the interests of society as a whole. Moreover, it also attempts to achieve this through portraying the protesters as criminals and terrorists who block the economic development of the country and pose significant threats to the commonwealth, not for legitimate environmental concerns but for some dubious motives and incentives. It is concluded that, with this approach, the government has managed to gain popular consent not only for the construction of HEPPs, but also for the repression of such movements.