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.