1 Chapter 17: Sustainability Communication

Sustainability Communication

Humans and other species communicate about sustainability every time we send or receive messages about our natural, social, and built environments. For humans, these environments include everywhere that people live, work, play, or pray. Human messages are encoded in words, numbers, images, sounds, gestures, clothing, media and arts, architecture, landscaping, and more. Because we send these messages about our environment consciously and unconsciously – through complex texts such as this textbook and gestures as simple as a shiver – we cannot not communicate about sustainability.

The unavoidability of communication makes understanding it not only useful, but necessary. While the world exists independently of how we communicate about it, we can only know it in human terms through the signs and symbols with which we represent it. If there is dirt on the rug and lead in the drinking water, talk alone will not remove them. But we can only know if they are “clean” by applying a set of cultural standards for housekeeping or regulatory standards for safe drinking water, which are communicated symbolically.
Scholars study communication about sustainability for several purposes. Phaedra Pezzullo and Robert Cox (2018) have defined the goals of environmental communication, which we can broaden to include the economic and social elements of sustainability. In this view, the study of sustainability communication should do three things:

• It should address sustainability crises – such as climate change or species extinction – by diagnosing how they are caused in part by distorted and corrupted communication. For example, news coverage often assumes that the sign of a healthy economy is overall economic growth regardless of its consequences, rather than successfully providing for the basic needs of all people and other species.
• It should strengthen our collective capacities to respond effectively and justly to signals about the well-being of environmental, economic, and social systems. For example, solutions journalism and speculative fiction (or science fiction) often focus on potential reforms that could advance sustainability, rather than simply diagnosing or denouncing our current problems.
• It should support efforts to heal the interconnections among humans and other species, so that people and nature can thrive together. For example, replacing a campus lawn with an organic community garden can transform an ornamental space that consumes a lot of water, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers into a place that feeds people, plants, and animals, while educating the community about how to live sustainably through signage and tours.

Framing Sustainability

Framing is one of the most useful concepts for understanding messages about sustainability and designing your own. Framing an issue means defining its boundaries (the way a picture frame does), but also providing a particular way of looking at it. An issue frame often has at least four aspects (Entman, 1993):

• Problem: a definition of the problem
• Causes: identification of the underlying causes of the problem
• Moral Treatment: attribution of responsibility or blame for the problem, and identification of its perpetrators, victims, and heroes (who are solving the problem).
• Solutions: a single solution (such as a proposed law) or a class of solutions to the problem (such as legal, political, economic, or cultural solutions).

Consider framing in the kinds of signs that youth climate marchers have brought to recent demonstrations, some of which read “Killing the Planet Means Killing Us” and “If You Can’t Be Adults, We Will.” These signs frame the problem of climate change in generational terms: adults are making decisions that threaten to destroy the planet for today’s youth. The cause is adult irresponsibility (for children, other species, future generations). The moral of this story is that youth are innocent victims of adults’ choices, but also heroes who are taking the mature view of the situation and acting as society’s conscience. The solution is for adults to listen to youth by taking action to reduce and mitigate climate change.

As these protest signs suggest, framing carries high stakes for what we do to nature and to each other. For example, we will arrive at very different public policy solutions if we frame climate change as a problem that threatens all people equally, caused by humanity’s way of life, which is therefore an undifferentiated collective responsibility, or if we frame climate justice as a problem of how those who have reaped the greatest rewards of the fossil fuel economy should bear the costs of protecting those who are most vulnerable to floods, fires, droughts, heat waves, and other disasters worsened by a warming climate. Many universities’ efforts to reduce their overall greenhouse gas emissions aim to mitigate climate change. A climate justice approach would lead universities to ask how to mitigate their impacts on the most vulnerable human and natural communities as well – for example, by refusing to purchase energy produced by evicting Indigenous peoples and endangered non-human species from their lands so energy companies can use it to produce oil, coal, and natural gas, but perhaps also hydropower, or lithium and other minerals used in batteries for electric cars.

Even a seemingly utilitarian document such as a campus map frames its subject. University maps typically assume that the problem of navigating a campus is best solved by directing people to where they should perform their institutionally-designated functions: to attend class, study, perform in co-curricular teams and clubs, use campus services, and pay their tuition bills. As moral documents, maps aim to enforce social order by instructing users about which activities belong where – science classes in labs, visitors’ vehicles in short-term parking lots, protests in designated “free speech zones.” Maps also contribute to the organizational culture of academic institutions by conferring honor on the namesakes of campus buildings and schools. These namesakes once earned their recognition by playing leadership roles at the school but now typically purchase it by making extraordinary financial contributions. In this way, maps integrate campuses into a larger economic system in which affluent people and organizations engage in branding many kinds of environments (physical and digital) to legitimize themselves, while institutions brand their spaces as worthy of attracting support from large donors.

Areas of Sustainability Communication

Communication about sustainability occurs in many contexts, not only in the mass media or social media. Below are snapshots of the main areas of study of sustainability communication, some characteristic questions they raise, and a few ways of studying them on your own campus.

Interpersonal, Group, and Organizational Communication

These areas examine sustainability-related beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, identities and relationships. How are they shaped by communication with our family and friends, by our sense of place and home, by the organizations to which we belong, and by our diverse cultural affinities? How do these relational dynamics influence whether people practice sustainability in their lives? The social sciences and humanities are especially well-equipped to help answer these questions.

On campus, one might analyze how communication in social groups and student organizations expresses and influences students’ understanding of sustainability, and their personal consumption patterns and ecological footprints. One could also examine how the institution frames its own sustainability efforts to different audiences through its academic, marketing, fundraising, and planning documents (Barlett & Chase, 2004). Whose knowledge and culture about sustainability are reflected in educational resources (such as the curricula, library holdings, campus exhibits) and organizational resources (campus sustainability plans, signage, orientation and training, etc.)? How do the built and natural environments shape communication and culture among students and others, especially architecture (residence halls, classroom and administrative buildings, libraries, athletics facilities, dining halls, student centers) and landscaping (quads, fountains, sculpture, playing fields)?

Science, Technology, and Health

Students in the natural sciences, engineering, and health need to learn to communicate accessibly and ethically with policymakers and the public about sustainability issues, which can often be polarizing (Jamieson, Kahan, & Scheufele, 2017). Science and risk communication are crucial for responding to threats posed by infectious diseases, climate change, pollution, natural disasters, and other dangers. To be effective, such communication needs to be a two-way street, in which experts engage the public in a respectful conversation, rather than simply lecturing at them or dismissing their views (Groffman et al., 2010). In a democracy, the challenge is to ensure that people can agree upon a shared body of facts that is supported by the best available science, while making room for the public to discuss how policy decisions might be guided by different values.

Students can get ready for this work by examining how sustainability science, risk, and health topics are communicated across campus. This includes identifying who delivers these messages, who the intended audiences are, and the formats used—such as coursework, campus health services, official university messaging, and student media. It also involves considering how people interpret these communications and translate them into attitudes or actions. In addition, educational technologies like online learning platforms and artificial intelligence demand huge amounts of power and water, and shape how students experience education and social interactions. How do educators and campus health services discuss the risks and benefits of our digital and natural environments? User-centered research can improve how health and risk information is designed, especially for populations that are often overlooked or difficult to reach. These questions are closely tied to justice: effective communication should be accurate, inclusive, and sensitive to social inequalities, cultural perspectives, and differing values, while balancing open dialogue with evidence-based knowledge.

Public Consultation and Decision-Making

This area focuses on designing, facilitating, and assessing dialogue, deliberation, and conflict resolution related to sustainability (Hunt, Walker, & Depoe, 2019). Learning in this area helps students build communication skills and empathy that can reduce political and cultural divides.

Effective public consultation can support widespread participation in campus sustainability planning, construction, investments, student government, and partnerships with surrounding communities, including Indigenous groups on whose lands many campuses sit. Students can evaluate how well existing decision-making processes work by examining who participates, how evidence is shared and understood, the quality of discussion, and the effects on policies and governance. Students may also design and lead their own consultations using established participatory models (Kettering Foundation, 2008; Marin & Minor, 2017). A key challenge is ensuring marginalized voices are included by actively recruiting underrepresented groups, promoting equitable dialogue, valuing lived experiences, and presenting expert knowledge in accessible ways (Karpowitz & Raphael, 2014).

Strategic Communication

Strategic communication includes creating and assessing organizing efforts, advocacy initiatives, and campaigns on sustainability issues. These activities can draw on methods from the humanities, social sciences, public health, marketing, and social work.

Because campuses both generate and receive many strategic messages, students can study how sustainability campaigns operate online and in person and how they connect to broader campaigns across higher education and society. Coursework may explore student government campaigns, campus advocacy for fossil fuel divestment or ethical purchasing, and institutional efforts to encourage environmentally responsible behaviors related to energy, waste, and water use. Using surveys, interviews, and digital analytics, students can measure the effectiveness of this communication. They may also design their own campaigns by researching issues, developing messages, choosing platforms, and assessing outcomes, drawing on participatory, social marketing, and social movement-based communication models (McKenzie-Mohr, 2011; Carragee & Frey, 2016).

Media Studies and Production

Media studies help explain how the ownership, creation, circulation, regulation, and culture of media influence how sustainability is portrayed and understood (Hansen & Cox, 2015; Starosielski & Walker, 2016). Students can examine how these media shape attitudes and behaviors, as well as how campus groups use media to build shared identities, values, and lifestyles. How do these messages emerge and circulate, and how are they interpreted and misinterpreted? Media ecology perspectives also highlight how communication technologies affect lived experience regardless of their content, such as how phones and video conferencing connect people across distances while sometimes weakening local relationships. Media literacy is especially important in addressing misinformation and polarization about sustainability. How do media reinforce unsustainable or unjust perspectives and actions, and imagine better ones? How could pro-sustainability sources and views be boosted in public discourse and debunk falsehoods?
Courses in media production—including journalism, film, digital storytelling, games, social media, and immersive technologies—allow students to create original fictional and nonfiction portrayals of campus sustainability issues. These courses can encourage students to experiment with sustainability-related genres and develop educational media, including interactive tools like games and virtual reality, that promote informed, inclusive, and meaningful engagement with sustainability on campus.

Like all aspects of sustainability communication, this area raises critical questions about access and power in communication: who gets to speak, which perspectives are included and treated as credible, and how is sustainability framed?

References

Barlett, P. F., & Chase, G. W. (Eds.). (2004). Sustainability on campus: Stories and strategies for change. MIT Press.

Carragee, K. M., & Frey, L. R. (2016). Communication activism research: Engaged communication scholarship for social justice. International Journal of Communication, 10, 3975-3999.

Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51-58.

Groffman, P. M., Stylinski, C., Nisbet, M. C., Duarte, C. M., Jordan, R., Burgin, A., … & Coloso, J. (2010). Restarting the conversation: challenges at the interface between ecology and society. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 8(6), 284-291.

Hansen, A., & Cox, J. R. (Eds.). (2015). The Routledge handbook of environment and communication. Routledge.

Hunt, K. P., Walker, G. B., & Depoe, S. P. (Eds.). (2019). Breaking boundaries: Innovative practices in environmental communication and public participation. Albany: SUNY Press.

Jamieson, K. H., Kahan, D., & Scheufele, D. A. (Eds.). (2017). The Oxford handbook of the science of science communication. Oxford University Press.

Karpowitz, C. F., & Raphael, C. (2014). Deliberation, democracy, and civic forums: Improving equality and publicity. Cambridge University Press.

Kettering Foundation (2008). Deliberation and the work of higher education. Kettering Foundation Press.

Marin, I., & Minor, R. (Eds.). (2017). Beyond politics as usual: Paths to engaging college students in politics. Kettering Foundation Press.

McKenzie-Mohr, D. (2011). Fostering sustainable behavior: An introduction to community-based social marketing. New Society Publishers.

Pezzullo, P. C., & Cox, R. (2018). Environmental communication and the public sphere (5th ed.). SAGE.

Starosielski, N., & Walker, J. (2016). Sustainable media. Routledge.