Environmental Communication

Overview

Environmental communication is highly interdisciplinary, drawing from, for example, anthropology, history, leisure studies, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and women’s studies. This is due, in part, to the different “brands” of environmentalism itself. Environmentalist thoughts, goals, and efforts can include both the radical and the mainstreamed. For example, on the mainstream end of the spectrum, RecycleMania is considered an environmentalist activity and its primary goal is to increase recycling efforts on college campuses by inviting universities to compete against one another to see who can recycle the most (as measured in pounds). An example from the radical side of environmental action is the international nonprofit, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which uses a fleet of ships to document or interfere with illegal practices involving marine animals. Beyond the spectrum of mainstream and radical, environmentalism can align with other social movements as well such as feminism, antipoverty, antiracism, animal rights, and slow food movements. Of course, environmental communication scholars also study antienvironmentalist messages (i.e., communication that opposes environmentalist regulation and challenges scientific findings that demonstrate negative health and ecology consequences of current practices). Because environmental communication scholars analyze communication from these sometimes oppositional perspectives, they look to many disciplines to help explain or describe environmental discourses, attitudes, and behaviors. The interdisciplinarity of environmental communication can also be attributed to environmental problems that come in many different forms and produce disparate results, actions, and policies. Attempting to analyze visual representations of toxic waste differs greatly from answering questions about why people choose to spend more money on products that they think are good for the environment.

The interests of the researcher will determine the types of environmental communication research needed for a particular project. Some research may also necessitate a familiarity with natural sciences such as biology, chemistry, physics, and ecology. Specifically, many scholars have become interested in how science is portrayed to the public through new media and by lawmakers. Understanding scientific findings and theories helps those researchers determining if the reports accurately reflect what scientists have found and whose interests are served by reporting in the ways that news media and lawmakers do. Reading scholarship within communication studies about the environment may introduce concepts and findings from any of these other fields and reading more widely from the other fields can provide an interesting context for issues under examination.

One theme that emerges frequently in environmental communication is called the nature/culture divide. The essence of this concern is the question: Is nature separate from culture? Although our society constantly reinforces that nature and culture [Page 422]are separated by language, most environmental communication scholars contend that they are not. Nature is everywhere. Therefore, it would be a mistake to assume that because one is in a city, for example, that nature is not present. Much research points out this false distinction, explaining its origins and current manifestations. However, it would also be wrong to assume that because this divide is a human-made construct, it does not have consequences. In fact, the consequences of the nature/culture divide are significant and explored often in environmental communication research. Researchers claim that the consequences are both positive and negative. On the positive side, the nature/culture divide allows us to make policies that designate some areas as “wilderness” and thus offer them protections from extractive resource development. On the negative side, though, such a distinction leaves some areas unprotected and makes them seem like good places to store nuclear waste, smelt heavy metals, incinerate toxic trash, and dispose of chemical waste. The nature/culture divide is perpetuated through our language and has consequences for land, wildlife, and humans.

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