Engaged Communication Scholarship for Environmental Justice: A Research Agenda

ABSTRACT

As a discipline of crisis and care, environmental communication needs to address questions of environmental justice. This article argues that the most appropriate approach to studying environmental justice communication is engaged scholarship, in which academics collaborate with community partners, advocates, and others to conduct research. The article reviews prior engaged communication scholarship on environmental justice, and proposes four streams of future research, focused on news and information, deliberation and participation, campaigns and movements, and education and literacy.     

Good Food,Good Intentions: Where Pro-sustainability Arguments Get Stale in US Food Documentaries

Focusing on recent documentaries about sustainable agriculture in the US—Food, Inc., The Garden, Fresh, and Farmageddon—this paper examines how pro-sustainable food arguments fail to merge environmentalism and environmental justice. By framing their approach to sustainable food production around the normative issue of “good food” for capitalist consumers, such documentaries ignore questions about community and cultural conceptions of farmers. In the process the films promote a problematic vision of the white family farm. As a consequence, these films limit a reimagining of alternative food systems, the roles for diverse actors within those systems, and possibilities for eaters beyond “voting with your fork.” Several exceptions, most notably The Garden, are used to suggest how cinema might radically re-envision participation in alternative forms of agriculture.     

Soil Erosion: A Food and Environmental Threat

Soil erosion is one of the most serious environmental and public health problems facing human society. Humans obtain more than 99.7% of their food (calories) from the land and less than 0.3% from the oceans and other aquatic ecosystems. Each year about 10 million ha of cropland are lost due to soil erosion, thus reducing the cropland available for food production. The loss of cropland is a serious problem because the World Health Organization reports that more than 3.7 billion people are malnourished in the world. Overall soil is being lost from land areas 10 to 40 times faster than the rate of soil renewal imperiling future human food security and environmental quality.     

Communication Practices and Political Engagement with Climate Change: A Research Agenda

In this article, we call for a refocusing of research on citizens’ political engagement with climate change. In doing so, we argue that communication practices not only help create the conditions for political engagement but they also comprise the modes of such engagement. Our argument proceeds in four steps. First, we review the literature on public engagement with climate change, concluding that there is a lack of attention to issues regarding the political. Consequently, we make the case for a refocusing of research on political engagement. Second, we explain how the notion of political subjectivity helps us to understand the relation between communication practices and engagement with the politics of climate change. Third, we discuss examples of dominant communication practices that constrain citizen political engagement by depoliticizing climate change, and alternative communication practices that have the potential to politicize. We end by outlining the many research questions that relate to the study of political engagement with climate change.     

The Impact of Perceptual and Situational Factors on Environmental Communication: A Study of Citizen Engagement in China

This study applied a situational approach to understanding an environmental problem: PM2.5 (its resulted haze and smog air pollution) in China. Based on a national sample of 374 citizens living in China, it tested a situational model of problem solving and extended it by adding citizens’ environmental engagement behaviour as an immediate consequence of their communicative action. Results of a structural equation modelling analysis supported all the causal links in the conceptual model. Moreover, communicative action significantly mediated the relationship between referent criterion and environmental engagement. Problem recognition, constraint recognition, and involvement recognition did not influence environmental engagement directly, but exerted their significant indirect impact via two key mediators in the model: situational motivation in problem solving and communicative action in problem solving. Theoretical and practical implications of the present study were discussed.     

The Dynamics of Justification in Policy Reform: Insights from Water Policy Debates in Ireland

Policy reform can be complex and fraught with contending arguments. Although much research has been conducted into the politics of coalition formation, less attention has been devoted to legitimating logics in policy reform. Drawing on the work of Boltanski and Thévenot, this exploratory study addresses this deficit by examining the influence of justifications deployed in policy debates. The paper analyses the role of shifting reasoning in contentious debates concerning attempts to reform water policy, including the introduction of domestic water charges in Ireland. Employing data from parliamentary deliberations, the paper traces the changing forms of justification used by those favouring and opposing the reforms. This examination suggests the importance of aligning an argument’s content with the shifting context into which it is introduced. The paper highlights the benefits of an investigative approach concerning policy justification for understanding policy reform dynamics at the intersection of politics and environmental communication.     

2030年可持续发展议程对全球及中国环境治理的影响

《2030年可持续发展议程》已经形成了社会、经济与环境三大支柱的格局.根据进程追踪的方法,本文通过回顾环境进入《2030年可持续发展议程》目标的过程,着重分析环境目标未来15年将对全球与中国环境治理产生的重要影响.在全球环境治理层面的基本结论是:①全球环境治理体系的重要性将显著上升.②新型伙伴关系将强化环境非政府组织与市民社会的作用.③未来全球环境治理将形成以数据和指标为驱动的特点.④联合国系统内环境机构的作用将进一步强化,联合国环境署的发展受到关注.⑤环境与气候变化中的资金融资与技术转让渠道将进一步多元化.⑥气候变化问题与其他环境问题将在全球和国家层面深度融合.对中国环境治理的积极影响,体现在:①《2030年可持续发展议程》将为中国经济的转型升级和可持续发展提供新的强大动力,并形成倒逼机制;②将显著提升中国公众的环保意识;③为中国在全球治理中发挥关键性作用提供了难得的着力点;④将使中国的区域合作更加“绿色化”.当然,在新常态的经济形势下,全球可持续发展的环境目标也使得中国环境治理的压力与责任不断增加.同时,《2030年可持续发展议程》也存在一系列问题与不足之处:①目标过多且模糊不清,实现难度大.②当前所罗列的一些目标间可能包含潜在的冲突,需要进一步的研究与论证.③环境目标缺乏量化的标准.尽管如此,就环境目标而言,《2030年可持续发展议程》比千年发展目标更加综合、全面和系统,是当今国际社会应对环境问题集体努力的成果,必须高度重视与研究.     

Best Practices in Environmental Communication: A Case Study of Louisiana's Coastal Crisis

This mixed-method case study of environmental communication best practices in Louisiana, USA, identifies trends and approaches as informed by environmental psychology. The results provide key insights for environmental communicators, especially communicators in coastal regions. In-depth interviews with both environmental psychologists and environmental communicators showed that both groups emphasized knowing the audience, telling local stories, building relationships with target audiences and targeted messaging. Both psychologists and communicators also frequently mentioned general messaging concerns of source credibility, avoiding controversial terms and talking about issues, impacts and solutions to which the target audience can relate. A representative survey revealed that Louisiana residents are most interested in hearing about how environmental issues such as climate change, coastal land loss and flooding are affecting their own communities. This finding supports the idea that environmental communicators could do a better job tapping into strong place attachment and sense of community among coastal residents to promote action.     

Urban Agriculture：A Transitional Mechanism for Reducing Environmental Degradation and Fossil Fuel over Dependence

With the increasing population in the urban cities of the world,the demand for food from distant areas has been on the rise but at the expense of scarce natural resources like oil,water and forest,etc.However,producing food locally in urban centers provides a sustainable mechanism of reducing the carbon,food or ecological footprints of these cities in particular and environmental degradation in general.It creates a circular metabolic system in which the natural inputs are efficiently harnessed rather than the linear metabolic system in which resources flow in and wastes flow out.This article analyzes some urban agricultural local initiatives in urban centers of the worlds that promote a circular metabolic systems and proposes the procedure that can be adopted to promote urban agriculture.     

Unit Environmental Property Rights： Efficiency, Responsibility and System

The inexplicit efficiency of environmental property rights lies in its fuzziness. Based on the character of environmental property rights discussed, unit environment shows intra relationship between efficiency and duty of environmental property rights, and constructs a symmetrical system arrangement. Through analyzing the possibility and feasibility of unit environmental property rights, the significance of symmetrical system arrangement to avoid the inexplicit efficiency of environmental property rights is discussed in this dissertation from the aspect of the validity of offering and implementing system.     

环境产权单元化:效率、责任与制度

环境产权的泛效率源于其自身的模糊性。环境单元化旨在探讨环境产权特征的基础上。分析环境产权效率与责任之间的内在关系。并建立两者相对称的产权安排。本文通过环境产权单元化可能性与可行性的理论分析。从制度供给和实施的有效性上．探讨了这种制度安排对解决环境产权泛效率的意义。     

On the Field of Environmental Communication: A Systematic Review of the Peer-Reviewed Literature

The field of environmental communication has reached several milestones since the 1990s, particularly the establishment of environmental communication-related divisions at professional associations and the founding of the journal Environmental Communication in 2007. This systematic review characterizes the peer-reviewed literature on environmental communication to date, examining methods, geography, top-cited articles, and analyzing keyword and titles. Drawing on the Web of Science Core Collection, which archives the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, the review finds that attention to environmental communication has exploded in recent years and that the field is methodologically open-minded. Scholars have shifted focus from general environmental risk to specifically climate change in the last decade. Implications for the field are discussed.     

Food for Thought: Audience Engagement with Sustainability Messages in Branded Content

Branded platforms are a growing “gray-zone” of marketing and media messages, in which corporations and news journalists partner to create content that supports strategic corporate goals while aligning with a publication’s scope of editorial coverage. As corporations are key influencers of and contributors to environmental communication, this trend has the potential to change environmental dialogue. In this article, we closely examine messages about food and sustainability, created in partnership by Chipotle Mexican Grill and the Huffington Post news site. We illustrate how use of a branded platform expanded the scope of environmental topics, issues, and frames that Chipotle addresses, how frames identified here connect to frames in coverage of science-related issues, as identified by other scholars, and discuss how branded platforms allow corporations to draw attention to polarizing environmental issues while protecting stakeholder relationships and brand reputation.     

Examining Community Perceptions of Energy Systems Development: The Role of Communication and Sense of Place

An increasing demand for the development and implementation of low carbon energy systems has furthered the need to understand the factors that influence a community's support for or opposition to local energy developments. Carbon dioxide capture and geological storage (CCS) is one such energy system where it is widely acknowledged that public perceptions and acceptance of CCS technologies are critical to their implementation. CCS refers to the capture of carbon dioxide emissions from industrial sources and the long-term storage of these emissions in stable underground reservoirs. This case study examines how place attachment and community networks factored into resident's perceptions of a proposed CCS project that was ultimately canceled due to local opposition. Participants were concerned about preserving shared places, spaces, and interactions that were valued by community members. Results demonstrate the need to ascertain how locally affected populations view CCS or other energy developments, especially with regard to their ideas about community, sense of place (ties to area and local relationships), and how they communicate about those factors. Such factors are important given the initiative to develop low carbon energy systems in rural areas.     

Strategic Environmental Assessment： A New Tool for Ecological Urbanization of Coastal Cities in China

Recently, there has been growing concerns about environmental issues related to urbanization in China. The intense natural resources utilization and increasing population has brought great pressure, especially in coastal areas, consequently affecting the sustainable development of coastal cities. In 2002, Environmental Impact Assessment Act （EIA Act） was enacted in China. Environmental impact assessment targeted at planning, one level of strategic environmental assessment （SEA）, thus became a legislative requirement. This paper considers SEA to be one of the important approaches not only to control coastal pollution, but also to conserve coastal ecosystems and finally to achieve sustainable development during urbanization, thus it will be a set an example for other areas of China. The experience of SEA in Xiamen, a coastal city in southeast China, illustrates the potentials of SEA. This paper first briefly introduces the concept and potentials of SEA, then compares two SEA cases and a project EIA case in Xiamen, and finally identifies the key characteristics of SEA.     

Protective Progressives to Distrustful Traditionalists: A Post Hoc Segmentation Method for Science Communication

ABSTRACT

This study demonstrates a post-hoc segmentation that is effective in creating distinct and robust segments of interest for researchers and practitioners in science communication. We use agglomerative hierarchical clustering to classify survey respondents based on answers to a short, five-item battery of questions drawn from variables that are frequently used in science communication. Resulting segments demonstrate strong differences in regards to demographics, issue-specific science knowledge, attention to media, sentiment toward media, and social networking site use. We assess the utility of the segments through a series of regression analyses in order to determine differences among segments with regards to intent to seek information about three science issues: fracking, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology.     

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.     

当代中国的环境政策:形成、特点与评价

当代中国环境政策的形成是在1972年联合国人类环境会议后开始起步。1979年翻2006年得翻快速发展。中国环境政策十分注意吸取发达国家的经验教训，密切结合中国国情，其主要特点有：①充分运用命令-控制手段；⑦努力推动筹集环保资金；③着力明确谁应承担保护环境的责任；④不断鼓励“防治结合”和“综合利用”；⑤较早体现对外开放和国际合作。30多年来，中国环境政策逐步演变并深化：地位从基本国策到可持续发展战略。重点从偏重污染控制翻污染控制与生态保护并重，方法从未端治理翻谭头控制，范围从点谭治理到流域与区域的综合治理。手段从以行政命令为主导翻以法律、经济手段为主导。文章最后介绍了国际社会对于这些政策的基本评价，展望了中国环境政策的未来。     

A Review of Environmental Sociology and the Sociology of Natural Resources： Insights for the Development of Environmental Sociology in China

Environmental sociology and the sociology of natural resources are two key subdisciplines of the sociological study on the interactions between nature and human society. Previous discussion on the relationships of these two fields has largely focused on their distinctions and synthesis in western （particularly American） academia. Environmental sociology emerged as an important sociological subdiscipline in China in the early 1990s and is under vigorous disciplinary construction at present. By contrast, the sociology of natural resources is still a novel term for most Chinese researchers. This article provides a systematic review of recent literature on the relationships between environmental and natural resource sociologies, which should provide important implications for the further development of environmental sociology in China.     

Ecolinguistics,GIS, and Corpus Linguistics for the Analysis of the Rosemont Copper Mine Debate

This article details an integration of geographical information system (GIS) and corpus linguistics (CL) techniques for an ecolinguistic analysis of a contentious, environmental debate in Arizona, USA. The application of GIS and CL procedures enabled the mapping of place name mentions present within two interest group corpora as well as the mapping of particular meanings and representations of specific places prominent in the debate, that is, maps representing both places and the discursive representations of those places were produced. The corpus-aided analysis and the GIS visualizations exhibit how different interest groups refer to and represent geographical places within their texts and how these references to and representations of places index ideological positions towards the mine and the environment. This integrated CL–GIS approach to the study of environmental discourse provides insights into the discursive representation of place and the importance that references to places serve within environmental discourse. The article briefly discusses the ecolinguistics framework underpinning the work, explains the GIS–CL approach, displays and interprets corpus findings and GIS visualizations, and details implications for additional GIS–CL research for environmental discourse.