Environmental Communication

Lecture 1
Content

• Defining environmental communication

• A basic model of communication
• Examples
• Context: Ways of bringing about behaviour
change
Defining environmental communication

‘In the simplest terms, environmental communication is

communication about environmental affairs. This includes all of the
diverse forms of interpersonal, group, public, organizational, and
mediated communication that make up the social debate about
environmental issues and problems, and our relationship to the rest of
nature.’

International Environmental Communication Association (IECA)

https://theieca.org/resources/environmental-communication-what-it-
and-why-it-matters
Defining environmental communication

‘Environmental communication is also an interdisciplinary field of

study that examines the role, techniques, and influence of
communication in environmental affairs. … It draws its theory and
methods primarily from communication, environmental studies,
psychology, sociology, and political science.’

IECA, https://theieca.org/resources/environmental-communication-
what-it-and-why-it-matters
Defining environmental communication

How I’m approaching environmental

communication:
• How to change minds and behaviours on issues
concerning the environment (e.g. climate change,
pollution, resource depletion, population, species
extinction, wilderness, areas of outstanding natural
beauty).

• Key questions: What messages (and other

interventions) are effective? Why are they
effective?
Environmental communication
• A main focus of the course is climate change (CC).

• But much of what we discuss (e.g. principles of

persuasive communication, and barriers to attitude and
behaviour change) will be relevant to other
environmental issues as well.

• And the various environmental problems and crises are

often interconnected.
Applied communication

• In terms of defining ‘communication’ there’s no

mystery …
Applied communication
Questions forming a basic model of communication:
• Who? (is communicating)
• Why? (What does the communicator hope to achieve?)

• What? (is the content / meaning of the message)

• How? (is it communicated – form/channel)

• To who? (is it communicated)

• When? Where? (What’s the broad context of the

communication?)
A basic model of communication

contextual factors

Source (who / why)  message (what / how)  recipient (to who)

contextual factors

Adapted from Lasswell (1948), Hovland (1953)

A basic model of communication

• Lasswell had one further question:

Is it effective?

• Are beliefs/behaviours changed?

• For how many?
• For how long?
Applied communication: Source examples

• News media • Artists

• Governments
• Corporations
• NGOs
• Pressure grps., movements
• Political parties
• Academics/experts
• Teachers
• Religious groups
• Community leaders
• People directly affected
Applied communication: Channel examples

• Books/articles (academic; • Speech/lecture/sermon

popular) • Meeting/negotiation
• Documentary • Dialogue
• Fiction (novel, film) • Protest action
• Other art forms • Debate
• Letter/blog • Display (e.g. museum)
• Website • Poster, banner
• Advertisement (and other • Leaflet/flyer/business card
marketing)
• Tattoo/clothing
• Press release
Applied communication: Form examples

• Explanation/argument

• Story/example/personal testimony

• Image/sound

• Aspects of style (figurative language; vocabulary; use of

slogans; tone/genre (tragedy, comedy etc.))

• Non-verbal communication
Applied communication: audience examples

Demographic groupings:
• Geographical / cultural
• Ethical / religious / political beliefs
• Gender
• Age
• Income
Etc.
Applied communication: audience examples

Arenas
• Interpersonal
• Small groups, organisations, communities
• Formal settings (e.g. education)
• National level (via mass media)

[Also intrapersonal (See Howard Gardner, 2006)]

Example

• ‘Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further

warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the
climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive
and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems. Limiting
climate change would require substantial and sustained
reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which, together
with adaptation, can limit climate change risks.’

IPCC, Synthesis Report, p.8 (2014)

Example

• Naomi Klein: This Changes

Everything (2014)
Example
… emissions are rising so rapidly that unless something radical changes …
2 degrees now looks like a utopian dream. … We don’t know exactly what
a 4 degree Celsius world would look like, but even the best-case scenario
is likely to be calamitous. Four degrees of warming could raise global sea
levels by 1 or possibly even 2 meters by 2100 … This would drown some
island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, and inundate many
coastal areas from Ecuador to Brazil to the Netherlands to much of
California and the northeastern United States, as well as huge swathes of
South and Southeast Asia … Meanwhile, brutal heatwaves that can kill
tens of thousands of people, even in wealthy countries, would become
unremarkable summer events … The heat would also cause staple crops
to suffer dramatic yield losses across the globe … this at a time when
demand will be surging due to population growth … When you add
ruinous hurricanes, raging wildfires, fisheries collapses, widespread
disruption to water supplies, extinctions, and globe-trotting diseases to
the mix, it is … difficult to imagine that a peaceful, ordered society could
be sustained. (Klein, 2014, pp.13-14)
Example

• See the TV commercial made by the Japanese Ad Council in

2009. It might be hard to see because of the quality of video,
but the two figures are made of sand and represents a mother
and a child. The lines appearing in Japanese say, respectively,
"Due to global warming, / 80% of Japanese sand beaches will
disappear. / It is not only the sand beaches that will be lost. /
Stop global warming".

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0Eua1vdu_4

[You can find this link below this lecture on Moodle]

Context

Assumptions:

1. Environmental crises
2. The need for ecologically informed behaviours (e.g. ‘new
ecological paradigm’ (Dunlap et al, 1978))
3. But, much of what we do isn’t sustainable
4. Therefore environmentally relevant attitudes and
behaviours need to change …
Context

The problem of attitude and behaviour change:

1. Environmentally relevant attitudes and behaviours need

to change
2. But they don’t seem to change much even though most
accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change (CC)
3. Therefore we need to know what the barriers to pro-
environmental attitude and behaviour change are.
Context

• We’ll discuss barriers soon

• In broad terms, how can attitudes and behaviours

be changed?
Ways of bringing about attitude/behaviour change:

1. Direct legislation (e.g. taxation, prohibition)

2. ‘Direct’ messages (e.g. news coverage, scientific

reports, documentaries)

3. ‘Indirect’ messages (e.g. fiction, images)

4. Social marketing (inc. ‘nudge’)

Ways of bringing about behaviour change:
5. Forms of political engagement, e.g.:
- Constitutional actions (e.g. voting)
- Direct & symbolic action (e.g. signing petitions, boycotting
companies, blocking roads to construction sites, civil
disobedience, school strikes)

6. Forms of social engagement, e.g. community initiatives

based around local renewable energy, consumption
practices, recycling, land reclamation etc.
Beliefs, attitudes and behaviours

• Different approaches directly target

beliefs/attitudes or behaviours

• Both are important

• The idea that captures both: ‘engagement’

Context

• Many of these methods will compliment one another.

• Crucially: In a democracy people need to be

persuaded towards accepting legislation that might
otherwise conflict with values they hold, or that
involves sacrifice (or is inconvenient).
Bjoern Hagen’s ‘theoretical framework’ (2016, p.56)
Applied communication

Key points:

• Applied analyses of communication often involves

consideration of how effectiveness is determined by
combinations of the elements mentioned (source,
message, recipient).

• Effective environmental communication cannot solve

environmental crises/problems by itself, but it makes
a vital contribution.