Abstract
A new decade, the ‘roaring 20ies’, with a very visible and tangible climate crisis, is crying out for solutions on a global scale, currently exacerbated in a COVID-19-related economic, social and cultural crisis. Sustainability is the moral compass for individual, community as well as organizational and institutional action for a new, regenerative human-nature relationship. At the same time, the increase in communication about sustainability (public discourses), of sustainability (CSR, policies) and even for sustainability (NGOs, Fridays for Future) challenges media and communication studies dealing with the critical evaluation of the principle of growth as master frame in public discourses and the necessity to communicate inconvenient truths of de-growth and abandonment. This chapter introduces the main provocations and concepts for sustainability communication in the future and, in doing so, further establishes sustainability communication as emerging field with rather unspecific boundaries.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
This is the title the UN chose for their series of Round Tables Discussions held on April 21st, 2016 with the aim of inspiring new communication means and tools for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). See: https://www.un.org/webcast/pdfs/160421pm-sdgs-com.pdf, last accessed: 10.04.2020.
- 2.
For further information see: https://www.edelma.com/trustbarometer, last accessed 10.02.2020.
- 3.
An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 American academy award winning documentary directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore’s campaign to educate people about global warming, which has become a reference project for communicating about sustainable development.
References
Adomßent M, Godemann J (2011) Sustainability communication: an integrative approach. In: Godemann J, Michelsen G (eds) Sustainability communication. Springer, Dordrecht
Agyeman J (2007) Communicating “just sustainability.” Environ Commun 1:119–122
Allen M (2016) Strategic communication for sustainable organizations: theory and practice. Springer, Cham
Brüggemann M, Engesser S (2017) Beyond false balance: How interpretive journalism shapes media coverage of climate change. Glob Environ Change, 58–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.11.004
Bruns A (2006) Towards produsage: futures for user-led content production. In: Sudweeks F, Hrachovec H, Ess C (eds) Cultural attitudes towards communication and technology. Murdoch University, Perth, pp 275–284
Burns (2015) Journal of transformative education. Transformative sustainability pedagogy: learning from ecological systems and indigenous wisdom. https://doi.org/10.1177/154134461558468
de Witt C (2011) Media theory and sustainability communication. In: Godemann J, Michelsen G (eds) Sustainability communication. Springer, Dordrecht
Diehl S, Karmasin M, Mueller B, Terlutter R, Weder F (eds) (2017) Handbook of integrated CSR communication. Springer, Cham
Elkington J (1997) Cannibals with Forks: the triple bottom line of 21st century business. Capstone, Oxford
Godemann J, Michelsen G (2011) Sustainability communication. Interdisciplinary perspectives and theoretical foundations. Springer, Dordrecht
Golob U, Podnar K, Elving WJ, Nielsen AE, Thomsen C, Schultz F (2013) CSR Communication: Quo Vadis? Corp Commun 18(2):176–192. https://doi.org/10.1108/13563281311319472
Herrick CN, Pratt JL (2013) Communication and the narrative basis of sustainability: observations from the municipal water sector. Sustainability 5:4428–4443. https://doi.org/10.3390/su5104428
Karmasin M (2020) The SDGs in a mediatized world. In Global Sustainable Development Goals in a Mediatized World (Akademie im Dialog Nr. 18), Austrian Academy of Science, (in print), pp 11–17
Karmasin M, Weder F (2008) Organisationskommunikation und CSR: neue Herausforderungen an Kommunikationsmanagement und PR. Lit Verlag, Wien
Krainer L, Voci D, Weder F (2018) Die „Entwissenschaftlichung“ des Nachhaltigkeitsdiskurses als paradigmatisches Beispiel für dieWissenschaftskommunikation. Wissenschaftskommunikation: Die Rolle der Disziplinen 1:127
Krainer L, Weder F (2011) Editorial. Medienjournal 1/2011: Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation, pp 2–3
Krotz F, Despotović C, Kruse M-M (eds) (2017) Mediatisierung als Metaprozess: Transformationen, Formen der Entwicklung und die Generierung von Neuem. VS, Wiesbaden
Kruse L (2011) Psychological aspects of sustainability communication. In: Godemann J, Michelsen G (eds) Sustainability communication. Springer, Dordrecht
Lindenfeld L, Smith HM, Norton T et al (2014) Risk communication and sustainability science: lessons from the field. Sustain Sci 9:119–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-013-0230-8
Management Communication Quarterly (2015), 29(1)
Milstein T, Castro-Sotomayor J (eds) (2020) Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity. Routledge
Newig J (2011) Climate change as an element of sustainability communication. In: Godemann J, Michelsen G (eds) Sustainability communication: interdisciplinary perspectives and theoretical foundations. Springer, Dordrecht
Newig J, Schulz D, Fischer D, Hetze K, Laws N, Lüdecke G, Rieckmann M (2013) Communication regarding sustainability: conceptual perspectives and exploration of societal subsystems. Sustainability 5:2976–2990. https://doi.org/10.3390/su5072976
Schäfer MS (2015) Climate change and the media. In: Wright JD (ed) International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences, vol 3, 2nd edn. Elsevier, Oxford, pp 853–859
Schäfer MS, Bonfadelli H (2017) Umwelt- und Klimawandelkommunikation. In: Bonfadelli H, Fähnrich B, Lüthje C, Milde J, Rhomberg M, Schäfer M (eds) Forschungsfeld Wissenschaftskommunikation. Springer VS, Wiesbaden
UN (2020) Take Action for the Sustainble Development Goals. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/
Weder F, Milstein T (2020/forthcoming) Revolutionaries needed! Environmental communication as an activist discipline and the potential of ecoculture Jams in pedagogy and practice. In: Takahashi et al (eds) International trends in environmental communication. Routledge
Weder F, Lemke S, Tungarat A (2019) (Re)storying sustainability: the use of story cubes in narrative inquiries to understand individual perceptions of sustainability. Sustainability 11:19. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11195264
Weder F, Tungarat A, Lemke S (2020) Sustainability as Cognitive Friction A narrative approach to understand moral dissonance of sustainability and harmonization strategies. Front Commun 5:8
World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5987our-common-future.pdf. Accessed April 2020
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Weder, F., Karmasin, M., Krainer, L., Voci, D. (2021). Sustainability Communication as Critical Perspective in Media and Communication Studies—an Introduction. In: Weder, F., Krainer, L., Karmasin, M. (eds) The Sustainability Communication Reader. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31883-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31883-3_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-31882-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-31883-3
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)