On Seeing “Places” for What They Are,and Not What We Want Them to Be

For more than 40 years, scholars have been investigating psychological and communicative implications for the concept of place. During that time, a variety of methods have been employed, yet often without an obvious concern for the extent to which investigative conclusions match perceptions held by respondents who originally generate data the analyses rely upon. Although this distinction between actors’ and informants’ meanings for place is a subject most in the field of environmental communication encounter in their formative education, the actual practice of place-based research sometimes fails to adequately address the issue. Thus, the following commentary explores various threats to representational validity and suggests a number of areas we researchers should consider when conducting our place-based studies. In urging ourselves to rise to the challenge of self-skepticism, I hope my analysis provides a modestly novel take on empiricism regarding what places mean to those we study.     

“I Drink It Anyway and I Know I Shouldn't”: Understanding Green Consumers' Positive Evaluations of Norm-violating Non-green Products and Misleading Green Advertising

Individual and collective efforts to mitigate climate change in the form of carbon offsetting and emissions trading schemes have recently become the focus of much media attention. In this paper we explore a subset of the UK national press coverage centered on such schemes. The articles, selected from general as well as specialized business and finance newspapers, make use of gold rush, Wild West, and cowboy imagery which is rooted in deeply entrenched myths and metaphors and allows readers to make sense of very complex environmental, political, ethical, and financial issues associated with carbon mitigation. They make what appears complicated and unfamiliar, namely carbon trading and offsetting, seem less complex and more familiar. A critical discussion of this type of imagery is necessary in order to uncover and question tacit assumptions and connotations which are built into it and which might otherwise go unnoticed and unchallenged in environmental communication.     

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.     

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.     

Researching Visual Environmental Communication

In 2008, we published a journal paper arguing that while scholarly work on media representations of environmental issues had made substantial progress in textual analysis, there had been much less work on visual representations. This special edition has a number of aims in this respect. It seeks to mark out where there has been progress since 2008, and the papers in this collection represent some of the fresh and exciting high quality scholarly work now emerging on an expanding number of topics and using different methods. We argue that we need to think more openly about what we mean by “the visual.” We begin by placing research into visual representations of the environment into the wider trajectory of visual studies research. We then proceed to review key trends in visual environmental communication research and to delineate core dimensions, contexts and sites of visual analysis.     

Reconnecting with nature for sustainability

Calls for humanity to ‘reconnect to nature’ have grown increasingly louder from both scholars and civil society. Yet, there is relatively little coherence about what reconnecting to nature means, why it should happen and how it can be achieved. We present a conceptual framework to organise existing literature and direct future research on human–nature connections. Five types of connections to nature are identified: material, experiential, cognitive, emotional, and philosophical. These various types have been presented as causes, consequences, or treatments of social and environmental problems. From this conceptual base, we discuss how reconnecting people with nature can function as a treatment for the global environmental crisis. Adopting a social–ecological systems perspective, we draw upon the emerging concept of ‘leverage points’—places in complex systems to intervene to generate change—and explore examples of how actions to reconnect people with nature can help transform society towards sustainability.     

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.     

析自然意识在生态旅游规划中的指导作用

工业革命后,特别是二战后的新技术革命,西方国家的社会生产力得到了迅速提高,但在一定程度上是以生态环境被破坏为代价的。20世纪60年代后,自然意识的兴起使西方国家变革了社会发展观,自然意识已成为西方国家处理人地关系的基本准则。这个过程本身对我们国家目前的发展是很有借鉴意义的。本文介绍了自然意识的缘起。比较了自然意识与人本环境论的主要特征;通过对其主要特征的分析,探索生态旅游规划的指导思想,结合中国古代“天人合一”思想提出了自然意识对生态旅游规划的五点指导原则;并结合安徽板桥自然保护区的生态旅游规划介绍五点原则在实际中的具体应用。     

Heidegger and Being at the Hanford Reservation: Standing Reserve,Enframing, and Environmental Communication Theory

This essay examines the potential of Heidegger's phenomenology as a foundation for environmental communication theory, emphasizing his critiques of modern science, technology, humanism, and metaphysics. A phenomenological approach to environmental communication provides resources for recognizing metaphysical assumptions that endanger both humans and nature. The Hanford nuclear reservation serves as an illustrative text, exemplifying Heidegger's reading of nuclear energy as a culmination of both Western metaphysics and the instrumental stance that he calls “enframing.” In Heidegger's view, the ordering and control accomplished through enframing obscures the mutually constitutive relationship between humans and nature, and in doing so, diminishes the possibilities for authentic human existence. The chapter examines how both representational and constitutive models of communication contribute to those conditions, and adopts a set of concepts from Heidegger's phenomenology as a foundation for an alternative, “bounded constitutive” model.     

可持续旅游及其区域实现途径探讨 ——以井冈山风景名胜区为例

可持续旅游是80年代中期以后提出的关于旅游业发展的新思想,经过十多年的不断拓展深化,已经得到世界各国的广泛认同,并作为跨世纪旅游业发展的战略指导思想。从可持续旅游的由来和对可持续旅游内涵实质的界定角度出发,结合可持续旅游实现途径的探讨,以井冈山风景名胜区为例,对风景区旅游业可持续发展进行了深入的探讨,为景区的发展规划提出了战略性构想,以期能对井冈山风景名胜区旅游资源的可持续利用和旅游业的可持续发展起到抛砖引玉的作用。     

Green-Tinted Glasses: How Do Pro-Environmental Citizens Conceptualize Environmental Sustainability?

Recent research has shown that many Australians see pro-environmental behaviour as desirable and identify as being green. However when compared to other countries, Australians score poorly on pro-environmental behaviour measures, engaging mostly in tokenistic pro-environmental actions, and demonstrate low levels of concern for the environment. In this article, we examine this tension through exploring the meaning of the term sustainability to Australian participants who self-identify as pro-environmental. Twenty-six interviews were conducted and analysed using a causal layered analysis. Through the examination of participants’ environmental discourse and practices, some of the deeper socio-psychological processes influencing pro-environmental behaviour are revealed. While participants aspired to be green, their actions were bound by cultural traditions and world views that perpetuate environmental degradation. Participants struggled to define the term sustainability and held self-enhancing motives for adopting what they identify as a pro-environmental identity. These findings highlight the influence of collective cultural constructs in shaping how pro-environmental behaviours are understood and enacted.     

Multiscale system dynamics of humans and nature in The Bahamas: perturbation, knowledge, panarchy and resilience

The analysis of the dynamic interactions between social systems, integrated by governance and communication, and biophysical systems, connected by material and energy flows, remains a challenge. In this paper, we draw on the heuristic models of the “adaptive renewal cycle” and “panarchy” [Gunderson and Holling (eds) Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press, Washington, 2002], which are embedded in the theory of complex adaptive systems. Taking island development research in The Bahamas as a case study, we investigate environmental stressors, knowledge and social response in the context of three distinct social–ecological subsystems: (1) the interaction between tropical storms/hurricanes and the social system of disaster preparedness/management; (2) coastal ecosystem degradation coupled with land development; and (3) the fishery, in which we also consider the impact of a recent biological invasion, the Indo-Pacific red lionfish. The findings demonstrate the complexity of panarchical relations and the crucial role of diverse and uncertain knowledge systems and underlying mental models of risk and environment for resilience and sustainability. These are acquired at different scales and form key variables of change. This also applies to processes of communication. Bringing together the various constantly evolving multi-level knowledge systems for effective communication and decision-making remains a major challenge.     

The emergence of climate change adaptation as a policy field: the case of England

Attention toward climate adaptation has been growing among governments over the past decade. In the European Union (EU) alone, nine countries have national plans for adaptation (with more in preparation), there are some 30 sub-national plans, and every Member State has policies to address adaptation. Given the recent attention given toward this subject a question that arises is: can climate change adaptation be considered a policy field? As a unit of analysis, policy fields are widely studied in the social sciences. However, the definition of policy fields such as environmental policy or agricultural policy is taken for granted. Oddly for such a common concept, very little attention is paid to what policy fields are in and of themselves or how they can be identified. Given these shortcomings, this article first attempts to fill this gap by theoretically defining what a policy field is by identifying and assigning their characteristics and dynamics. Based upon a literature review, it shows that policy fields are three-dimensional entities comprised of substantive authority, institutional order, and substantive expertise. The second task of this article is to apply this definition to adaptation policy activity in England and determine whether adaptation can be considered a policy field there.     

Measurement and Meaning in Environmental Communication Studies: A Response to Kassing,Johnson, Kloeber,and Wentzel

This essay represents an invited editorial response to Kassing, Johnson, Kloeber, and Wentzel's “Development and Validation of the Environmental Communication Scale” in Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture. Kassing and his associates use an apt review of the status of the environmental communication field as the basis for developing a protocol and instrument to measure the actual practice of engaging environmental subject matter in daily life. Although their factor analytic work is laudable in its intent, their approach to empirically exploring environmental communication in action further institutionalizes a number of conceptual and methodological shortcomings in our discipline. In particular, what researchers and respondents think constitutes “environmental” content per se poses a significant barrier to using the proposed tool in applied settings. After critiquing the Kassing et al. work in terms of a number of issues related to the validity and reliability of their research, I conclude by suggesting that the research may provide a needed springboard for exploring the dynamics of interpersonal settings that mediate important dialog and action regarding the environment.     

Anthropomorphic Anthropocentrism and the Rhetoric of Blackfish

The documentary film Blackfish has made a splash at the box office, impacting millions of viewers and prompting calls to legislatively prohibit orcas from being held in captive environments. This essay analyzes Blackfish in terms of its anthropomorphic communication techniques that attribute human qualities to orcas. We introduce the term “anthropomorphic anthropocentrism” to argue that the anthropomorphic construction of orcas in Blackfish may well be a story that is more about what it means to be human than a story about what it means to be orca. Furthermore, we explain the importance of anthropomorphic anthropocentrism as an analytical tool that navigates environmental and ecological frameworks. We conclude that anthropomorphic anthropocentrism’s analysis of anthropomorphic rhetoric and the human epistemological assumptions it reflects, when taken together, offer significant insights into the ways environmental communication creates and/or disrupts human–nature relationships.     

Merging Duke Energy and Progress Energy: Online Public Discourse,Post-Fukushima Reactions,and the Absence of Environmental Communication

This article examines online discourse in 2011 surrounding the proposed Duke Energy and Progress Energy merger in the Carolinas. It explores how issues pertaining to the merger, including constructing new nuclear plants, are discussed in media coverage and by citizens using social media. Overall, we find that the merger discourse focuses on economic concerns rather than the environmental concerns we had anticipated. However, post-Fukushima discourse appears to have become more inclusive of environmental concerns. We conclude that environmental discussions and efforts are likely to be globally informed andlocally situated, discussing the implications for environmental communication research exploring online discourses, specifically through social media. Future research must address how to locate and delineate constellations of locally situated discourse to provide a clearer picture of environmentally focused social media communication.     

Perspectives and limitations of indicators in water management

This paper addresses the issue of indicators for water management by considering why we need them, what the characteristics of a good indicator should be, how they can add value to policy and decision-making, and what are their limitations. There are a vast quantity of data available on water in Europe from which a range of basic trend indicators has been derived. Most of these indicators address "what is happening?"-type questions. Some indicators go further and address "does it matter?" questions by assessing trends against prescribed standards and targets. There have been some interesting developments in indicators which help to understand the demand side of water management and to assess the relative efficiencies of resource usage in different socio-economic sectors. More effort is needed to bring together relevant social, economic and environmental information interactively to define indicators that address questions about the sustainability of water use and the contribution of the water environment to our overall quality of life. The development of indicators to date has concentrated on making the best use of available information. However, we now need to move from a position of "best available information" towards "best needed information". This will require better communication between information users and providers. It will also require a rethinking of exactly what our priority knowledge needs are to support policy-making and environmental management. This is essential if we are to obtain the best value from limited monitoring resources by eliminating the current redundancy in reporting requirements and refocusing programmes to deliver priority information needs. Electronic Publication     

A perspective on radical transformations to sustainability: resistances,movements and alternatives

A transformation to sustainability calls for radical and systemic societal shifts. Yet what this entails in practice and who the agents of this radical transformation are require further elaboration. This article recenters the role of environmental justice movements in transformations, arguing that the systemic, multi-dimensional and intersectional approach inherent in EJ activism is uniquely placed to contribute to the realization of equitable sustainable futures. Based on a perspective of conflict as productive, and a “conflict transformation” approach that can address the root issues of ecological conflicts and promote the emergence of alternatives, we lay out a conceptual framework for understanding transformations through a power analysis that aims to confront and subvert hegemonic power relations; that is, multi-dimensional and intersectional; balancing ecological concerns with social, economic, cultural and democratic spheres; and is multi-scalar, and mindful of impacts across place and space. Such a framework can help analyze and recognize the contribution of grassroots EJ movements to societal transformations to sustainability and support and aid radical transformation processes. While transitions literature tends to focus on artifacts and technologies, we suggest that a resistance-centred perspective focuses on the creation of new subjectivities, power relations, values and institutions. This recenters the agency of those who are engaged in the creation and recuperation of ecological and new ways of being in the world in the needed transformation.     

Towards practice-oriented design for sustainability: the compatibility with selected design fields

Design scholars are currently exploring the potential role of design in fostering sustainable consumption. The social practice has been put forward as a relevant unit of analysis for capturing the dynamics of consumption, and, as a possible unit of intervention for design. This article sets out to explore the extent to which existing design resources may come to use in the development of practice-oriented design. To do that, it takes social practice theory as a starting point, and outlines some implications for design. Based on that, their compatibility with key principles and approaches from the design fields concerned with environmental issues and the relationships between humans and technologies is discussed, and tensions and promising resources are identified. By doing that, the aim is to contribute to the ongoing inquiry into what practice-oriented design may be, and more specifically, to discussions on the characteristics of design and innovation activities that may help foster transitions in less environmentally impacting directions.