Participatory Media in Environmental Communication


Book Description

Participatory Media in Environmental Communication brings together stories of communities in the Pacific islands – a region that is severely affected by the impacts of climate change. Despite living on the margins of the digital revolution, these island communities have used media and communication to create awareness of and find solutions to environmental challenges. By telling their stories in their own way, ordinary people are able to communicate compelling accounts of how different, but interrelated, environmental, political, and economic issues converge and impact at a local level. This book fills a significant gap in our understanding of how participatory media is used as a dialogic tool to raise awareness and facilitate discussion of environmental issues that are now critical. It includes a section on pedagogy and practice – the undergirding principles, the tools, the methods. The book offers a framework for Participatory Environmental Communication that weaves three widely used concepts, diversity, network and agency, into a cohesive underlying system to bring scholars, practitioners and diverse communities together in a dialogue about pressing environmental issues. This book is a valuable resource for researchers and students in communication and media studies, environmental communication, cultural studies, and environmental sciences, as well as practitioners, policy makers and environmental activists.







The Environment in the Age of the Internet


Book Description

How do we talk about the environment? Does this communication reveal and construct meaning? Is the environment expressed and foregrounded in the new landscape of digital media? The Environment in the Age of the Internet is an interdisciplinary collection that draws together research and answers from media and communication studies, social sciences, modern history, and folklore studies. Edited by Heike Graf, its focus is on the communicative approaches taken by different groups to ecological issues, shedding light on how these groups tell their distinctive stories of "the environment". This book draws on case studies from around the world and focuses on activists of radically different kinds: protestors against pulp mills in South America, resistance to mining in the Sámi region of Sweden, the struggles of indigenous peoples from the Arctic to the Amazon, gardening bloggers in northern Europe, and neo-Nazi environmentalists in Germany. Each case is examined in relation to its multifaceted media coverage, mainstream and digital, professional and amateur. Stories are told within a context; examining the "what" and "how" of these environmental stories demonstrates how contexts determine communication, and how communication raises and shapes awareness. These issues have never been more urgent, this work never more timely. The Environment in the Age of the Internet is essential reading for everyone interested in how humans relate to their environment in the digital age.




The Handbook of International Trends in Environmental Communication


Book Description

This handbook provides a comprehensive review of communication around rising global environmental challenges and public action to manage them now and into the future. Bringing together theoretical, methodological, and practical chapters, this book presents a unique opportunity for environmental communication scholars to critically reflect on the past, examine present trends, and start envisioning exciting new methodologies, theories, and areas of research. Chapters feature authors from a wide range of countries to critically review the genesis and evolution of environmental communication research and thus analyze current issues in the field from a truly international perspective, incorporating diverse epistemological perspectives, exciting new methodologies, and interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks. The handbook seeks to challenge existing dominant perspectives of environmental communication from and about populations in the Global South and disenfranchised populations in the Global North. The Handbook of International Trends in Environmental Communication is ideal for scholars and advanced students of communication, sustainability, strategic communication, media, environmental studies, and politics.




Empirical Studies of Participatory Environmental Communication


Book Description

International and local stakeholders are being engaged to alleviate the global environmental and livelihood challenges affecting the rural community. NGOs are helping to share these burdens by implementing community projects that address environmental and livelihood issues in rural communities. However, implementing such community projects is challenging for several reasons. One of the main challenges is considering viable implementation strategies applied as pragmatic instruments to community projects. The pragmatic instruments of participatory environmental communication that consider environmental communication, non-formal environmental education, stakeholders' participation and environmental conflicts are the major tenets used to implement community projects in the rural society in Ethiopia. These implementation strategies are best sought by a local NGO working on an Environment and Forest Development Program aimed at improving Ethiopia's environment and rural society's livelihood. Although it has ups and downs, the NGO has vast experience of implementing community projects. The experiences provide solid solutions for the viability of community projects.




Communicating Climate Change


Book Description

This edited collection focuses on theoretical and applied research-based observations concerning how experts, advocates, and institutions make climate change information accessible to different audiences. Communicating Climate Change concentrates on three key elements of climate change communication – access, relevance, and understandability – to provide an overview of how these aspects allow multiple groups of stakeholders to act on climate-related information to build resilience. Featuring contributions from a wide range of scholars from across different disciplines, this book explores a multitude of different scenarios and communication methods, including social media; public opinion surveys; participatory mapping; and video. Overall, climate change communication is addressed from three different perspectives: communicating with the public; communicating for stakeholder engagement; and organizational, institutional, risk, and disaster communication. With each chapter focusing on implications and applications for practice, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers of climate change and environmental communication, as well as practitioners interested in understanding how to better engage stakeholders through climate change-related communication.




Breaking Boundaries


Book Description

Breaking Boundaries analyzes efforts made by communities and policy makers around the world to push beyond conventional approaches to environmental decision making to enhance public acceptance, sustainability, and the impact of those decisions in local contexts. The current political climate has generated uncertainty among citizens, industry interests, scientists, and other stakeholders, but by applying concepts from various perspectives of environmental communication and deliberative democracy, this book offers a series of lessons learned for both public officials and concerned citizens. The contributors offer a broader understanding of how individuals and groups can get involved effectively in environmental decisions through traditional formats as well as alternative approaches ranging from leadership capacity building to social media activity to civic technology.




The Handbook of International Trends in Environmental Communication


Book Description

This handbook provides a comprehensive review of communication around rising global environmental challenges and public action to manage them now and into the future. Bringing together theoretical, methodological, and practical chapters, this book presents a unique opportunity for environmental communication scholars to critically reflect on the past, examine present trends, and start envisioning exciting new methodologies, theories, and areas of research. Chapters feature authors from a wide range of countries to critically review the genesis and evolution of environmental communication research and thus analyze current issues in the field from a truly international perspective, incorporating diverse epistemological perspectives, exciting new methodologies, and interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks. The handbook seeks to challenge existing dominant perspectives of environmental communication from and about populations in the Global South and disenfranchised populations in the Global North. The Handbook of International Trends in Environmental Communication is ideal for scholars and advanced students of communication, sustainability, strategic communication, media, environmental studies, and politics.




Citizen Voices


Book Description

A diverse series of studies across Europe and the US are presented, providing readers with empirical insights into the articulation of citizen voices in different national, cultural and institutional contexts.




The Psychology of Pro-Environmental Communication


Book Description

The environment is part of everyone's life but there are difficulties in communicating complex environmental problems, such as climate change, to a lay audience. In this book Klöckner defines environmental communication, providing a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the issues involved in encouraging pro-environmental behaviour.