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.     

Everyday Epiphanies: Environmental Networks in Eco-Makeover Lifestyle Television

This article offers an analysis of the New Zealand eco-makeover program, WA$TED! It outlines how eco-makeover programs are an emerging sub-genre of the makeover phenomenon of lifestyle television where people and homes are subject to transformation by lifestyle experts, culminating in the revelation of the transformation at the end of the program. The article argues that the featured families in WA$TED! experience “everyday epiphanies” where they learn about their implication in existing environmental networks and they are ushered into new, more environmentally friendly networks. Drawing on actor-network theory, the article deconstructs the featured environmental networks, examining the roles of the program hosts, the transformations in the subjectivities of family members, and the functions of everyday household technologies and objects. The article argues that the significance of the program resides in the way the revelations make visible previously concealed linkages between families, everyday objects and practices, and the broader social and environmental domain.     

“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.     

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.     

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.     

Negotiating Virtue and Vice: Articulations of Lay Conceptions of Health and Sustainability in Social Media Conversations around Natural Beverages

Prior studies have suggested that despite increasing sustainability awareness, many consumers are confused about the impact of green products on their health and the environment. Unlike those studies that privilege professional discourse and adopt unrealistic presumptions of rationality and morality, this article showcases consumers as active co-producers of value and meanings. Using netnography, it analyzes social media conversations around Naked Juice and Innocent smoothies—two products marketed as healthy, all-natural, and environmentally sustainable beverages. The findings reveal a baseline picture of the products' virtues of healthiness feeling (hedonic) and holistic health image (symbolic). The article illustrates how this moral conception was dynamically constructed and transformed in the course of consumers' communicative practices. It proposes three discursive strategies by which consumers negotiate the nature and boundaries of good and bad choices vis-à-vis the products: highlighting (separating virtue from vice), balancing (reconciling virtue and vice), and resisting (reconstructing virtue as vice).     

海岛居民环境友好行为及其影响因素研究--以长岛县为例

海岛是海洋生态系统的重要组成部分,保护海岛生态环境是推进海洋生态文明建设、保护海洋生态环境的重要方面。海岛居民是保护海岛生态环境的主体之一,研究海岛居民环境友好行为的影响因素,引导和鼓励海岛居民主动采取环境友好行为是改善海岛生态环境的有效途径。本研究在梳理国内外相关文献的基础上,对海岛居民环境友好行为的概念、类型及影响因素进行理论分析,建立包含生态管理行为、消费行为、说服行为、公民行为四个环境友好行为变量,环境态度、环境保护知识、环境经历、社会政策、行为约束五个影响因素变量在内的理论模型。结合海岛生态环境和海岛居民的特点,设计海岛居民版环境友好行为测量量表,并在长岛县进行问卷调查,运用描述性统计分析、结构方程模型分析探究海岛居民环境友好行为的影响因素及影响因素间的内在关系。研究发现:①海岛居民环境友好行为总体水平差异较大,难度较低的环境友好行为实施较好,而难度较高的实施较差;影响因素变量中,环境态度积极,环境经历丰富,环境保护知识掌握较好,相关社会政策较为不利,行为约束偏中性。②环境态度、环境经历、社会政策对海岛居民环境友好行为具有显著正向影响。③环境保护知识对环境态度具有显著正向影响,但对海岛居民环境友好行为无显著影响,存在“知易行难”现象。行为约束对海岛居民环境友好行为无显著影响。④环境经历不仅直接影响海岛居民环境友好行为,而且通过环境态度对海岛居民环境友好行为施加间接影响。基于研究结论,提出了改善海岛居民环境友好行为的对策建议。     

Political Participation and Pleasure in Green Lifestyle Journalism

This article examines the reportage of green lifestyle practices across the online sites of major British newspapers. The articulation of “green lifestyle journalism” in the study is suggestive of its complex identity, given its implication in existing orders of consumption while also expressive of emerging everyday practices that potentially and variously challenge those orders of consumption. The study enquires into whether such green lifestyle journalism stories are, in fact, reported across different online sites, and if so, in which publications and how such stories are classified within online menus. It also examines the range of reported environmental lifestyle practices and how they are attributed with meaning, including their engagement with the concept of pleasure and its association with political participation. The study reveals that the pleasures associated with sustainable living are often marginalized, and instead an ethical consumer is commonly posited who is variously cognitively deficient, worried about the environmental consequences of their everyday behavior, or concerned about their inability to realize their desires to engage in sustainable lifestyle practices. The article also examines those instances when the pleasures of a more sustainable lifestyle are represented as deriving from the implementation of environmental practices and technologies in everyday, domestic contexts, and also when they are illustrated as the product of civic and political engagements with issues of sustainability.     

Species of the Month: Anti-Whaling,Mediated Visibility,and the News

Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and captain of anti-whaling ship the Steve Irwin, has emerged as one of the world's most visible environmental protesters. This essay, based in part on a long interview with Watson in Australia in 2009, analyzes his mediated visibility and thus capacity to participate in public debate by isolating various components of his strategic activities under four themes: mediated protest, symbolic power, media practices, and celebrity. It argues that Watson's visibility involves a complex flow of information and meanings across various “old” and “new” media form, but remains reliant on news media. Thus, despite his generally astute media practices and strategies, Watson's visibility is contingent on a set of professional practices and logics unlikely to provide sustained news access or long-term legitimacy to a political “outsider.”     

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.     

Using Visual Impact Metaphors to Stimulate Environmentally Friendly Behavior: The Roles of Response Efficacy and Evaluative Persuasion Knowledge

ABSTRACT

Although people often are aware of the importance of adopting environmentally friendly lifestyles, they might be reluctant to do so as they believe that their actions do not make a difference (i.e. low response efficacy). Furthermore, they might experience reactance (e.g. negative attitudes) towards environmental messages that encourage them to adopt an environmentally friendly lifestyle. Therefore we experimentally tested whether it is possible to stimulate people to adopt an environmentally friendly lifestyle (i.e. recycle more clothing) by using visual impact metaphors that convey the message that old clothes deserve a new life. The findings show that a message in the form of a visual impact metaphor (vs. no visual impact metaphor) results in more positive attitudes towards recycling and stronger recycling intentions. This effect was mediated by two different underlying mechanisms: Response efficacy and more positive attitudes towards the persuasive attempt (i.e. positive evaluative persuasion knowledge).     

Effects of environmental illiteracy and environmental awareness among middle school students on environmental behavior

This study proposes and employs a structural model to examine the effects of environmental literacy, environmental awareness, environmental attitudes, and environmental behavior among middle school students in Eski?ehir on their purchase of environmentally friendly products. In the proposed structural model, environmental illiteracy and environmental awareness were the exogenous latent variables, while pro-environmental attitude, pro-environmental behavior, and the purchase of environmentally friendly products were the endogenous latent variables. The latent variable of environmental illiteracy did not have a statistically significant effect on environmental attitudes and purchase of environmentally friendly products, whereas environmental awareness had a positive effect on pro-environmental attitudes and the purchase of environmentally friendly products. These findings indicate that students with environmental awareness also develop positive attitudes toward the environment, and the presence of a positive attitude toward the environment leads them to display pro-environmental behaviors and adopt a positive attitude toward environmentally friendly products.     

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.     

基于元分析的游客环境责任行为影响因素整合研究

游客环境责任行为对于推进我国旅游目的地生态环境保护及可持续发展具有重要意义，已有研究缺乏对游客环境责任行为影响因素的系统性整合研究。借助元分析法，从756篇国内外文献中筛选出30篇标准文献作为研究数据，对游客环境责任行为（TERB）影响因素进行整合研究。结果显示：（1）个人特征、感知价值、目的地体验、目的地涉入、地方特征、环境态度与地方依恋等7大因素均显著影响TERB，个人特征、感知价值与TERB之间呈中度正相关关系，其余因素与TERB之间均呈高度正相关关系，其中，目的地体验与TERB的正相关关系最强(r=0.600)，而个人特征最小(r=0.260)；（2）样本量、文化背景和出版类型在各因素对TERB的影响过程中具有调节效应，其中，样本量对个人特征、感知价值、目的地体验、目的地涉入、地方特征以及地方依恋与TERB间的关系均具调节作用；文化背景对个人特征、地方依恋与TERB间的关系存在显著的调节作用；出版类型对目的地体验、地方特征与TERB间的关系起到明显调节作用；（3）游客环境责任行为影响机理具有复杂性，不仅受到多个因素的共同影响，而且受到调节变量的影响。最后提出若干管理启示。     

Expectations,Experiences, and Memories: Ecotourism and the Possibilities for Transformations

This essay explores how ecotourism destinations and media materials rhetorically construct ecotourists’ anticipations, experiences, and memories through ethnographic and rhetorical analyses. Using theory related to phenomenology, this study examines how expectations are formed through rhetorical tropes such as the sublime, the exotic, and the dangerous adventure. In turn, these expectations direct attentions towards specific experiences and memories. However, because ecotourism activities become critical experiences with other natural and social worlds that supersede everyday practices, these events have the potential to foster critical awareness of self, other, the natural world, and practices related to traveling, shaping the environmental self and identity.     

Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Tropical Agriculture: Scope and Research Priorities

The scope of mitigation options in tropical agriculture is discussed for three different activities (a) agroforestry, (b) rice-based production systems and (c) pasture/animal husbandry. The prevention of deforestation - and the re-forestation of degraded land - could become a key elements to national climate protection programs of some developing countries. Agroforestry may offer economically viable windows of opportunity for sustainable use of tropical forests whereas additional funds (e.g. through “Clean Development Mechanism”) will be required to make re-forestation programs profitable. Alternative management practices in rice-based systems may offer win-win options to reduce emissions and - at the same time - to obtain another improvement in the production system, namely through optimized timing of nitrogen fertilizer, temporary drainage in irrigated rice fields and integrated residue management. Introducing pasture in degraded land can sequester substantial amounts of carbon (similar to re-forestation). Future research has to include participation of stakeholders from all conceivable levels, i.e. farmers' cooperatives, non-governmental organizations, national agricultural research centers and extension services, to devise simple and financially interesting incentives for reducing emissions. The feasibility of environmentally friendly production techniques has to be disseminated to the public through ‘success stories’ (documented in public media) and demonstration farms.     

环境治理的社会规范路径

环境问题的根源在于人类的行为,引导个体实施环境友好行为是环境治理的基本思路。环境社会规范会对环境行为产生重要的影响,是环境治理的重要路径。本研究在阐述社会规范的种类及其作用机制的基础上,借鉴环境社会规范激活的相关理论,阐明环境社会规范激活的影响因素及环境社会规范作用于环境行为的基本机理,分析中国环境社会规范激活存在的障碍,提出政府通过促进环境社会规范的激活来治理环境所应当采取的措施。研究结论表明,整体环境社会规范的激活水平决定着环境社会规范对环境行为的作用力,其取决于相互影响的环境描述性规范、环境命令性规范、环境个人规范的激活水平以及外部约束条件。由于受到客观物质生活条件的制约,中国环境社会规范的激活存在一些障碍,导致环境社会规范激活处于较低的水平,这些主要的障碍包括环境消极描述性规范反向作用大、环境个人规范激活水平低和行为的成本、行为的技术障碍、行为的便利性等外部因素的制约突出。在此,提出的建议是政府相关部门可以采取积极措施,通过提高环境社会规范的激活水平来达到环境治理的目标。政府相关部门可通过描述性规范信息的传递提高环境描述性规范激活水平。环境宣传教育中通过生态价值观确立、环境污染行为不利后果的明确认知、环境不利后果避免的正确归因来提高环境个人规范的激活水平。通过降低遵守环境社会规范的难度和成本消除环境社会规范激活的外部制约因素。通过完善环境立法并强化环境法的实施可有效提高环境描述性规范、环境命令性规范、环境个人规范的激活水平,从而提高整体环境社会规范的激活水平。     

The Impact of “No Impact Man”: Alternative Hedonism as Environmental Appeal

As “No Impact Man,” writer Colin Beavan conducted a one-year experiment to determine whether he and his family could reduce their environmental impact to zero while living and working in Manhattan. This article examines the No Impact Man (NIM) experiment both as “alternative hedonism,” a reconceptualization of the “good life” that avoids unduly damaging the natural world, and also as a kind of “eco-stunt,” an attempt to garner significant media coverage about positive environmental behaviors. We use DeLuca's theorization of the “image event” to analyze the No Impact Man franchise—blog, book, and documentary film—though we modify that theory in order to explore how No Impact Man functions as multi-media and new-media spectacle. In particular, we explore the risky double-bind Beavan finds himself in when, through his choice to publicize the NIM eco-stunt, he is critiqued for opportunism, foolishness, and insincerity. We suggest that efforts to publicize eco-stunts, however well conceived, invariably invite backlash. As a result, we find that alternative hedonism theory and practice open a space of invitation to environmentally beneficial behaviors and attitudes that could have potential with some audiences, but their mass appeal is compromised by the limitations of the stunts that publicize them.     

Magick as an Alternative Symbolic: Enacting Transhuman Dialogs

This essay examines Neo-Pagan practices of magick and, via Rogers's criteria for a transhuman theory of communication, argues that these practices enact a transhuman dialog that has potential to enhance environmentally sustainable ways of living. Magick helps to re-member immanence in all entities through learning to exercise modes of sensation that have become dormant. Of central importance to the practice of magick is taking eros seriously while expanding awareness beyond the human to the other-than-human. Such sensory experiences and relationships serve to recover the concrete from the dominance of the abstract, eros from the dominance of rationality, the material from the dominance of the ideational, and the natural from the dominance of culture. This essay works to bridge theoretical and practical implications of dialogs with nature by identifying practices that can overcome trained incapacities that block sensual, dialogic relations with the other-than-human world, while also acknowledging limitations in the transformative potential of Neo-Pagan ideologies and practices.     

Personal Metabolism (PM) coupled with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model: Danish Case Study

Sustainable and informed resource consumption is the key to make everyday living sustainable for entire populations. An intelligent and strategic way of addressing the challenges related with sustainable development of the everyday living of consumers is to identify consumption-determined hotspots in terms of environmental and health burdens, as well as resource consumptions. Analyzing consumer life styles in terms of consumption patterns in order to identify hotspots is hence the focus of this study. This is achieved by taking into account the entire value chain of the commodities consumed in the context of environmental and human health burdens, as well as resource consumptions. A systematic commodity consumption, commodity disposal, and life style survey of 1281 persons living in urbanized Danish areas was conducted. The findings of the survey showed new impact dimensions in terms of Personal Metabolism (PM) patterns of residents living in urbanized areas of Denmark. Extending the PM analysis with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provided a clear picture of the per capita environmental and human health burdens, as well as resource consumptions, and the exact origin hereof.A generic PM-LCA Model for all the 1281 persons was set-up in Gabi 6. The assessment results obtained applying the model on all 1281 personal consumption scenarios yielded the 1281 Personal Impact Profiles (PIPs). Consumption of food and energy (electricity and thermal energy) proved to be the primary impact sources of PM, followed by transport. The PIPs further revealed that behavioral factors (e.g. different diets, use of cars, household size) affect the profiles. Hence, behavioral changes are one means out of many that humanity will most likely have to rely on during the sustainable development process. The results of this study will help the Danish and other comparable populations to identify and prioritize the steps towards reducing their environmental, human health, and resource consumption burdens.