The Future of Environmental Communication

This week's discussions and readings surrounded aspect of the future of environmental communication, and the question of what the future holds for environmental communication.

In her article, "Internet Use and Environmental Attitudes: A Social Capital Approach" Jennifer Good approaches this issue, in regards to the connection between Internet Use and the Environment. Good highlights the fact that as a medium with the capacity and potential to disseminate information and facilitate interaction inexpensively and across time and space, the Internet has proved a valuable tool for the struggle for sustainable human activity for many environmentalists. She provides an overview of literature that explores the relationship between the Internet and environment, and through reviewing this literature, comes to the conclusion that although the internet has become a tool in the environmental movement, the question of the extent of this tool's capacity and ability has only just begun to be explored.

Good highlights the fact that not only can the internet provide immense and diverse amounts of information regarding the environment, issues, and progressive actions but does so  in a very accessible manner which has the ability to reach millions. It also has tremendous potential, and has already begun to be used as a tool for environmental organization and activism. (In my own first paper, i studied this aspect in conducting research on the potential for online environmental communities to create actual change in the real world - so this was a good personal connect for me within this article- link to Care2 one of the worlds top ten environmental websites: http://www.care2.com/). Good highlights the notion of the Internets ability to facilitate environmental change with less effort, and while allowing individuals to participate more often and easily, while carrying on with "life as usual" and cites academic research done on this aspect of the internet as well (Within my own research, i found this aspect of the internet's contribution to environmental activism and participation, one of the most successful, through my own research it was a main property attached to the success of the internet and environment connect).

The rest of Good's article goes on to discuss the internet and environmental social capital, and her methods for data gathering in her research, and the results of her research- I am choosing only to highlight the above as it was of most interest to me considering my own personal attachment to the subject!

In the next article for this weeks readings:
"TreeHuggerTV: Re-Visualizing Environmental Activism in the Post-Network Era" by Lisa D. Slawter, TreeHuggerTV, a collection of online videos that explore how to create, consume and live in environmentally responsible ways, is studied as the author claims, it offers a productive site for examining environmental activism at the intersection of nature and culture. 

Slawter looks at TreeHuggerTV as a form of environmental activism that emerges on post-network television. She traces how it productively re-visualizes the environment, environmentalists, and environmentalism. She looks at the potential of this environmental activism that embraces human culture in relation to the environment, and creates an accessible entrance into environmentalism for viewers in a commercial medium.


This article states that the emergence of TreeHuggerTV coincides with a larger trend described by one green website editor in The New York Times : "green-focused Web sites are getting about as trendy as celebutante D.U.I's". The ways in which TreeHuggerTV parts ways with traditional iterations of environmentalism and television are looked at, as well as the ways in which Television can serve as a Site for Environmental Activism.


Main Points I found important:
-*TreeHuggerTV offers a rich site for examining the role of online videos as one variation of post-network ‘‘television’’ that may give voice to environmental perspectives excluded from mainstream media representations.
 In working to make environmentalism mainstream, TreeHuggerTV challenges a number of assumptions about environmentalists and ultimately provides a different visualization of environmental activism, in which the environment is shown as the inhabited place where people live, environmentalists are modern urbanites, and environmentalism is green consumption.

Slawter also found that her analysis of TreeHuggerTV highlighted a number of possibilities and limitations of environmental activism in the post-network era. She suggests that we may find hope in the possibility for the proliferation of media outlets to provide opportunities to include in the public sphere formerly excluded perspectives and voices. She argues that projects like TreeHuggerTV have the potential to rupture previous containments and exclusions of environmentalist perspectives.
 
 
Slawter concludes that the interplay between the form and content of TreeHuggerTV represents an important site to begin studying the future of environmental activism and its intersections with new media developments such as post-network television.

After reading this article I did a little research on TreeHuggerTV, and looked up their website. I found a few videos that were interesting... this one particularly stood out because it kind of encompasses what our class did at the beginning and end of the course, explain our relationship with the environment.
In this Video TreeHugger asked Students why they care about the environment, and what they wish parents, politicians and adults in power would do about environmental issues.

What about Researching Environmental Communication?

In "Measuring and Meaning in Environmental Communication Studies: A Response to Kassing, Johnson, Kloeber and Wentzel" James Cantrill critiques a review done by these three authors, in terms of a number of issues she has with their work, related to the validity and reliability of their research and offers a conclusion suggesting that her research may provide a needed springboard for exploring the dynamics of interpersonal settings that mediate important dialog and action regarding the environment.

Cantrill particularly focuses on definitional issues embedded in this research and he believes possesses what an ongoing problem in the field of environmental communication - specifically, what people think constitutes "environmental" content, in hopes to encourage future replications and extensions of people working within this field.

Cantrill's work is effective and important but i feel his communication skills get lost in the descriptions he uses, at least for people ilke myself reading and trying to understand his work. Using statements to describe the previous point like "I hope to encourage future replications and extensions on our colleagues' efforts by suggesting that this research may provide a needed springboard for exploring the hitherto largely obscure dynamics of interpersonal settings that spawn all manner of important dialog and action regarding the environment" - is a very complicated statement that could be communicated in a much more "matter of fact" manner that would be more effective and much easier to understand. If you want future colleagues to be inspired of your work - i feel as if you should write it in a way that appeals to a broad variety of them, so the people just beginning to study environmental communication - who are the "future extensions" of your field.

That is the main issue i took with Cantrill's article, I feel as if his intentions, looking back at the way in which environmental communication is studied, the short comings of different approaches, and offering solutions to past problems, were helpful and can be successful, but the ways in which he communication his critique and ideas made me loose interest in his overall argument thus making it less effective.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed George Lakoff's "Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment". I am particularly interested in Framing, and just wrote my term paper on this aspect of communication. Lakoff's did a good job providing examples for his explanations and really breaking down not only the importance of framing, but the different aspects of framing, such as common ways it is misunderstood, how different political systems frame the environment,and how the absence of frames effects environmental hypo cognition. All of these inclusions by Lakoff make it an easier read then Cantrill's and more effective in gaining knowledge on the topic.

Lastly, in J. Cox's "Beyond Frames: Recovering the Strategic in Climate Communication" the author addresses the issue of neglecting strategic alignments in a lot of recent climate communication campaigns, Cox argues that this neglect has lead to these campaigns to be non-adaptive at the scale and urgency actually needed for productive change.

Cox also is more effective in portraying his ideas and arguments in using a constructive example, of the 2007 Step It Up initiative and the Sierra Club's "Beyond Coal" campaign. In using these campaigns to back up his argument he has more of a foundation upon which to construct his arguments and therefore they are more effective to readers, or at least to myself.

Lisa Ling Goes Green

I was watching E! Entertainment News this morning, and a whole segment was dedicated to Journalist Lisa Ling from the Oprah show and her "Green" house. I Couldn't find the segment from the actually E! show yet, because it is too new, but will post it once it is available not the net.

However, when searching for it, i did find a news segment posted last March when the home was being built :

I thought i would post this because it just goes to show how "Going Green" is being communicated in all aspects of the media - from local nightly news, to global popular entertainment shows. The trend is becoming very popularized which is a really good thing for this movement - to see people actually DOING instead of just talking about doing.

Communicating Environmental Advocacy

The first article we were asked to read for class this week, "Greenpeace International Media Analyst Reflects on Communicating Climate Change" is an interview about the communication choices that the senior media analyst from Greenpeace, Soneke Lorenzen, faces when organizing and creating publicity about the global climate change issue.

Throughout this article, interviewer, DeLuca, asks questions that address the ways ins which the issue of global climate change is framed for the media, and thus the public, the role of the media in representing environmental issues in the public sphere, and communication  and imaging strategies that Greenpeace uses to get it's messages out into the public.



What I felt was important to take from this article, through my interpretation, and class discussion, is the question of how effective media, and groups like Greenpeace are at communicating their messages to us, the general public. A lot of the people in class talked about their issue with the way that groups like Greenpeace present their goals, in that sometimes they seem to complex, or too "big" for us to solve. Images in Greenpeace ad's although most often, are astonishing, and catch the viewers attention, usually thats all that they do - in my opinion. Since they show such big issues, in such media-image effective ways, they do their job at getting attention - what they could, however, do better at - is creating effective messages and images, that while catching public attention, also provide solutions, and push people to act... by giving them ideas of how THEY CAN make a difference, not just showing the problem in the most exciting and captivating way possible.

In the second article for this week, "The Structure of Social Movements: Environmental Activism and its Opponents" Author, Luther P. Gerlach, discusses the topic of social movements from a Network Perspective and provides a really good summary of the organizational strategies that work to characterize the different aspects of Segmented, Polycentric, and Integrated Networks that he identifies as found in most American social movements. This article works to highlight the shift there has been from a centralized and/or bureaucratic organizational structure to one that is segmentary, polycentric, and an integrated network and calls this new type of organizational structure a SPIN organization.

SPIN's have many benefits, not just for social networks but as this article highlights for environmental movements as well.

The most vital part of this article, i find, is the description of the ways ins which social movements, like the environmental movement can be described as "NETWORKED". In modern times, it is important to recognize the complexity of any type of movement, with all the available tools for these groups to mobilize, communicate and work with one another and the public. These organizations with available technologies and communication tools are diverse and in no way isolated from one another, they form integrated networks, and are complex in their relationships. New networking possibilities, i feel completely define the movements of the present age. Networking enables movement participants to exchange information and ideas with one another, and allows them to coordinate participation, in some cases around the globe allowing for joint action and communication. Groups and movement members, are not only linked through networks internally, but with other movements externally, with other participants who share attitudes or values on similar issues - through these links movements can draw material support, can recruit new supporters and participants, and expand coordination for joint and increased action.
I feel as if Networking is what holds all the other characteristics: segments, polycentric aspects, and linkages, together.

I found that this article was really interesting in the way in which it described the internal and external aspects of environmental movements, it's easy to see the things they do through the media, in the news etc, but it's interesting to see how they come together and work. Overall it highlighted the way in which SPIN organizational structure, helps participants to challenge and change the dominant order and to survive with the immense amount of competition and challenges they face. It argued for the ways in which this type of organizational structure is innovative and strong from the inside out, and may very well be the organizational form of the future, one which is best suited to communicate and work to progress this need to manage globally and locally based organizations for the common good.

During this class, Jenn Good showed a number of environmental campaign videos from Greenpeace. These were really effective in communicating their messages on the level that, as i stated before, catching the attention of the viewers and really pulling at their emotions. They were both visually and emotionally exciting. On the other hand, however, I feel that in viewing these my point from earlier was, at least for me, supported - the fact that although these are exciting- and VERY successful at catching the attention of viewers and getting them to watch and listen to their msg - they seemed TOO powerful TOO big - without offering ANY Solution.

There was an exception, however. The video shown about the dove products, with the little girl - did the opposite and i found was a template for what these campaigns should work to do, and how they should communicate to the public. It gave us a PRODUCT and a SOLUTION. By showing how harmful a certain product was that people go to the grocery store around the corner and buy - and giving statistics on how harmful this was - it allows us an option to make a choice that makes a difference... we can go and consciously choose not to buy this product now that we know how harmful it is. Instead of just showing us visually exciting and sad images of whales dying and forests burning.

Another example of an effective Ad i've seen recently from Greenpeace, which uses the same effective technique, of providing solutions by giving a more specific action that we can do :

Again, by providing a real product in a simple way a solution is also provided for the average citizen.

Consumerism,Materialism and effects on the Natural Environment

 "...sustainability issues are the historical result of the prevailing belief within Western Industrial societies that both firms and consumers are self-interested critics, with consumers maximizing utility through consumption and with firms maximizing profit through meeting the demand. The belief that the road to happiness is through consumption ignores the fact that the resources for consumption are limited and the consumption of the limited resources are not equal globally." 

The statement above is from the article "Sustainability and Consumption"within which authors Huang and Rust explore the ways in which aspects of sustainability should affect the overall consumption behavior of consumers, charitable aid to poorer countries, and responsible environmental practices by businesses. They create and present a model that enables them to provide what they feel implications would be for consumers, society and business.

One of the statistics in this article that shocked me:
"Consumers in the industrialized nations consume more than 80% of the limited natural resources."


The authors argue that as a result of this immense consumption, consumption inequity has become a significant source of global tension.

All this leads to their argument which outlines the sum of their whole article: that this consumption inequity gives rise to the advocacy of sustainable consumption whereby each person should consume only their "earth share"in order to make the consumption socially equitable and ecologically sustainable.

The authors lay out a model in this article, that shows how consumers, business and governments interrelate with respect to sustainability, and consumption, this model attempts to derive optimal behavior for consumers and business with respect to decisions about consumption environmental sacrifice, charitable aid and use of green technology.

I found this part of the article very interesting and useful. What they are expressing here the substance of their theory, which is that there is three main dimensions to sustainability, 1)consumer/societal happieness and standard of living, 2) corporate profit and pollution and 3) geological issues like global conflict. Their layout and description of each of these dimensions and the variables that link them were productive. BUT i found that their results section which should be the strongest part of their article somewhat lessened the credibility of their argument. The results that they stated seemed very obvious and the authors lost me at this point, although i can see the importance of how they got to these results and the importance of their discussion to the overall discourse surrounding sustainability consumerism and the natural environment.

"Shop 'til We Drop? Television, Materialism and Attitudes about the Natural Environment" really changed my view of how effective Television really is on general opinion and discourse surrounding many issues, but specifically environmental ones. The article emphasizes how important research is that speaks to how indivisuals form their sense of relationship with the natural environment, in the modern heavily mediated society. I would have never though that TV plays such an invasive role on attitude formation on environmental attitudes. Perhaps this is from my years of studying communication and being taught that consumers are much more conscious than often given credit for, and that we don't just consume messages and believe what we tell us. HOWEVER, this article sheds a new light on this issue, and points it in a different direction, one that views materialism as a mediating variable between television viewing and environmental attitudes.

Television is built on the premise of materialism, it exists overall to make a profit, as the article states :
"At a fundamental level, commercial television exists because of an arrangement between those who create television, those who wish to advertise on television, and those who view television. Television assembles audiences, and advertisers buy those audiences to sell goods and services." 

The article states how advertising is a major source of promoting materialism, and plays a huge part of creating a consumer culture. It also argues that not only advertising, but television more generally transmits information about materialism, and promotes positive images,narratives, and messages about materialism.

In this article: The argument thus is that television viewing is related to lower levels of concern about the natural environment, as television viewing is positively related to materialism,and environmental attitudes are negativley related to materialism. And the question asked is "Does materialism mediate the relationship between television and attitudes about the natural environment?"... both the argument and the research question find support and validation throughout the research presented.

This study provided a new type of outlook on the power of television, and the price society's interest and dependence on it has on the natural environment.

Finally, Salvador's deconstructs the problematic issues within the Green Consumerism movement, and highlights the fact that books such as "The Green Consumer" and many others within the movement, argue that environmental problems demand changes in the everyday practices of consumers. But on the other hand, it simultaneously advances the view that intrinsic and substantial changes to consumer habits are not needed. These types of arguments obscure the correlation between the dimensions of a problem and the effort needed to correct it. This article works to expose several contradictions manifest in the book "The Green Consumer" primary claims and asses the implications of such contradictions for the broader environmental movement. The article overall concludes that while Green consumerism offers a potentially valuable measure for immediate action, it at the same time severely risks limiting more substantial and long term reform in the relationship between consumer society and the environment.

Discussions regarding this article in class surrounded the fact that they could see the ways in which the Green movement is becoming so popular in pop culture and all different types of products that are being mass circulated, because it is asking us to do what we're best at, consume.

Consumerism and the Environment: Information is power

Greenwashing and Green Marketing

Today in class we discussed issues surrounding Greenwashing and Green marketing. Before this class I didn't know a lot about this topic and the discussions/ 4 articles assigned opened my eyes to the vast amount of Greenwashing that I am exposed to on a daily basis. It also has made me more aware and critical of these advertisements and marketing strategies.

In the "Let It Green: The Ecoization of the Lexicon" I liked it how it outlined the green movement's beginnings, it is interesting to find out where something that we are so used to seeing on a daily basis , all started from, and also realizing that it was quite some time ago that this trend started, and also realize how much it has been exaggerated with new media, and all the new available technological platforms from food labels to television commercials to social media advertisements. It is also interesting to see how the insertion of green into language transformed from being rooted in environmental battles to being branched out into a form of marketing.

The other part of this article that i found very interesting, was the way in which it discussed the word "eco" as being exploited. Benz states that:

"...eco- no longer refers to concern for the environment primarily because savvy marketers have exploited eco's original green connotations and have affixed eco- to the front of their products in an effort to sell more units, to increase consumption of their products- anit-eco actions to say the least."

In class we looked at a lot of hummer ad's, and a lot of the discussion surrounded these different ads. As we were going through these ad's and as I was listening to these comments I thought to myself, that just as the word "eco" is exploited in rhetoric, eco-like images, like green landscapes, beautiful natural scenery, and other green images are exploited visually in television, magazine and internet advertisements through the images we are presented with alongside the products. 

An example of an advertising campaign for the cleaning product "green works" was shown. The discussion surrounding this video everyone's really connected to the "Greening of Products" article. This article presented a study that used Information Manipulation Theory as a framework to understand participants (and people's, more generally) evaluation and perceptions of green advertisements. This article points out that many consumers are skeptical towards green glaims which hinders the products effectiveness. Within this study one of the main findings was that Quality ( expectations about the truth of the information) was hugely associated with honesty and positive attitudes towards advertisements. When discussing the video shown for "Green Works" most of the responses from students were regarding the fact that they couldn't even tell it was an advertisement until they saw the product placed throughout the video a few times, and at the end the product name came up and it became obvious it was an advertisement. This response was often followed by how effective they found the advertisement to be. I found it really interesting how much a real life situated paralleled the research presented in this article. 

Below is a link to the Green Works video shown in class:

A third article assigned for this week, "Communication Business Greening and Greenwashing in Global Media" explored the ways in which knowledge about  greenwashing is communicated in the specialized discourse of a CNN's Greenwashing video, to show the ways that processes of knowledge selection are employed for shaping public awareness and understanding of environmental issues. This article is useful because it illustrates the communicative tactics and downfalls displayed by different organizations.  It argues the ways in which the environmental organizations activities and the consumers attitudes are legitimated and evaluated in order to provide a legitimate base for the specific product and advertisement. However the article takes issue with the fact that the greenwashing companies are not given a voice or legitimizing any of their claims, which leads to a imbalanced and unreliable discourse. This article is important, in a class which is focusing on the communication of environmental issues, because it highlights, relating to the last article, why people may be skeptical about all of these green advertisements that they are being so constantly bombarded with. Since they are not confronted with any kind of verbal legitimations, they are given nothing to counterbalance the delegitimizing opinions of criticism and environmental experts.

For my artifact this week i found a number of sites concerned with greenwashing. These sites all have a common goal, to raise awareness and create critical awareness around greenwashing throughout the media. They all give different examples of greenwashing as well as provide information surrounding environmental causes, the harmful effects of techniques like greenwashing, etc.

http://www.greenwashing.net/

http://stopgreenwash.org/

http://webecoist.com/2009/12/14/greenwashing-so-absurd-its-almost-funny/

Throughout the semester, espeically last week, we talked about eco tourism, animals in zoos , if this is write or wrong, etc.

Alot of what was brought up was that human traits seem to be characterized onto these wild animals, because of children books, movies etc. And so when animals, act wild, like animals, they are killed, or demonized... when in fact this is their nature, and by taking them out of the habitat and placing them in to a constructed one, expecting them to act in a way that they are not built to, that is a constructed view that animals cannot live up to, and many times are punished for not living up to.

Why im posting this is because getting ready for school this morning, i saw a news clip on the Today show, regarding animals that had been let loose from a conservervation or perserve in Ohio, before the owner killed him. The newscaster stated... all of these animals have been accounted for, and most killed.. as many environmental activists state was the only choice.

It is the only choice? To kill animals that were taken out of their natural environment and put into a synthetic one... and then let loose into our environment by a human? Doesnt sit right with me.

Overall, just thought it really fit with what this class is about.

Below is a clip from a different news station reporting on the event.