A Missed Opportunity?: NOAA’s Use of Social Media to Communicate Climate Science

In the current media landscape, organizations often communicate about science directly with publics through online channels rather than relying on journalist gatekeepers. Online platforms present organizations with the opportunity to participate in two-way communication in order to increase engagement with science. The present study examined how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) utilizes social media to interact with publics. Results suggest that NOAA does not fully utilize the dialogic potential of social media, which could enhance both the public’s science literacy and trust in science regarding climate change specifically. This study informs how public relations theory may complement science communication theory and practice as deficit model-thinking transitions to contemporary approaches for public engagement with science.     

How to Discredit a Social Movement: Negative Framing of “Idle No More” in Canadian Print Media

The Idle No More (INM) movement entered public view in November 2012 as a grassroots response to Canadian federal legislation Bill C-45, an omnibus bill that reduced environmental protection of lands and waters. Backed by new media technologies, Indigenous activists and their Settler Canadian allies took a series of online and offline actions to bring public attention to Bill C-45’s devastating implications and the socio-economic sufferings of Indigenous people across Canada. This explorative study examines how INM was reported by nine Canadian print media during its initial upsurge from December 2012 to January 2013. A mixed-methods content analysis reveals that although there were numerous supportive voices discussing INM’s contributions to Indigenous self-determination and environmental protection, they were overwhelmed by anti-INM rhetoric advanced by Postmedia Network and its affiliated titles. The study thus highlights the importance of promoting communication and media alternatives for future struggles against capitalism’s appropriation of nature.     

“Fox Tots Attack Shock”: Urban Foxes,Mass Media and Boundary-Breaching

This paper offers a brief comment/analysis of an abridged version of America's Best Idea that was produced and distributed by Earth Ministry (with WETA's approval). There were two versions (one for Christian audiences and the other for "everyone else," i.e. interfaith) that were distributed, along with a study guide, that use Ken Burns' film to teach about/endorse creation care. This paper discusses the ways in which the film is edited to highlight its already salient "God and country" themes and to suggest that this version of the film should prompt critics to reconsider the entirety of (the original) America's Best Idea as a more complex statement of faith/nationalism and to consider the extent to which both of these films suggest a privatized, personal environmental agenda. In other words, the broader discourses of creation care threaten to move environmental concerns out of the realm of policy/public/governance (unless articulated publicly to faith-based justifications) and into the realm of the individual's relationship with God first…and others (family, community, nation, world, and various assemblages, i.e. capitalism) second.     

Fanning the Blame: Media Accountability,Climate and Crisis on the Australian “Fire Continent”

This paper raises questions of media coverage of “compounded crises” related to extreme weather disaster, in the context of urgent calls to address the implications of a changing climate. Through media analysis, it examines the ways debate over bushfire protection policy was framed and made culturally meaningful, thereby politically consequential, in the wake of the worst bushfires in modern Australian history, Black Saturday (2009). The fires, in which 173 people died, led to a Royal Commission and fierce debate over the use of prescribed burning to reduce bushfire hazard. Longitudinal analysis of local, state and national mainstream media coverage (2009–2016) reveals blame games that targeted environmentalists and the government, which near-silenced meaningful discussion of the complexity of fire science, impacts of climate change on weather conditions, and calls for adaptation. By exploring the media’s constitutive role in crisis response, the paper highlights the legacy and potency of ideological conflict that shapes the media-policy nexus in Australia.     

Narratives,Rhetorical Genres,and Environmental Conflict: Responses to Schwarze's “Environmental Melodrama”

The appearance of Steven Schwarze's essay, “Environmental Melodrama” (Schwarze, 2006) as the lead article in a recent issue of The Quarterly Journal of Speech marks an important moment of recognition for environmental communication scholarship. Schwarze's essay demonstrates how studies of environmental rhetoric can contribute to rhetorical theory more generally, while addressing practical questions regarding the rhetorical aspects of environmental conflict. The contributors to this forum respond to Schwarze's arguments, drawing in part upon their own case studies of rhetorical action and narrative in environmental conflict.     

Neoliberal Style,the American Re-Generation,and Ecological Jeremiad in Thomas Friedman's “Code Green”

Emerging popular literature trumpeting the prospects for Manifest Destiny through a greener capitalism illustrates the re-emergence of American myth to explain chaotic times and uphold America's exceptional character. Today, this character is dominated ideologically by the rhetorical repertoire of neoliberal economics. In this essay, the author dissects neoliberal rhetorical style as articulated through national myth and ecological jeremiad in bestselling author Thomas Friedman's (2008) “Code Green” thesis. In Code Green, an American strategy for confronting the convergence of global warming, new economic competition abroad, and population growth, the author traces a mythic “evolution” in ecological jeremiad toward a sustainable free market frontier. Crafting a muscular yet ostensibly non-political rhetoric of individualist sacrifice and reward, Friedman refigures the dark side of Western-led globalization's past.     

Mounting Tensions: Materializing Strategies and Tactics on National Park “Social Trails”

This essay builds from Samantha Senda-Cook's 2013 article, “Materializing Tensions,” to explore the material rhetorics of the so-called “social trails” of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. These improvised, foot-worn pathways, diverging from and running alongside official Park Service trails, materialize a tension between what Michel de Certeau termed “strategies” and “tactics,” revealing how both are always at play in park and preserve trailspace and how the movements of the individual trail walker actualize and perpetuate a common concept of place. The study demonstrates and advocates close rhetorical attention to material aspects of the biophysical environment and the way that physical traces of many individuals over time can influence the subsequent actions and interpretations of others. The final discussion argues that as further tensions in trailspace rhetorics are identified rhetorical analysis must not fail to account for them.     

“I Drink It Anyway and I Know I Shouldn't”: Understanding Green Consumers' Positive Evaluations of Norm-violating Non-green Products and Misleading Green Advertising

Individual and collective efforts to mitigate climate change in the form of carbon offsetting and emissions trading schemes have recently become the focus of much media attention. In this paper we explore a subset of the UK national press coverage centered on such schemes. The articles, selected from general as well as specialized business and finance newspapers, make use of gold rush, Wild West, and cowboy imagery which is rooted in deeply entrenched myths and metaphors and allows readers to make sense of very complex environmental, political, ethical, and financial issues associated with carbon mitigation. They make what appears complicated and unfamiliar, namely carbon trading and offsetting, seem less complex and more familiar. A critical discussion of this type of imagery is necessary in order to uncover and question tacit assumptions and connotations which are built into it and which might otherwise go unnoticed and unchallenged in environmental communication.     

Revisiting the “Ozone Hole” Metaphor: From Observational Window to Global Environmental Threat

In 1985, just over 30 years ago, the “ozone hole” made its appearance in the press as a truly global environmental threat. As one of the most important environmental issues of the twentieth century, the “ozone hole” is also a remarkable metaphorical, visual, and imaginary construction. This essay examines the historical trajectory of the famous “ozone hole” from its birth within the astronomical community at the beginning of the twentieth century to its contemporary framing as a global environmental threat. The article provides evidence why metaphors constitute a valuable object of historically informed studies of scientific practice, and shows in particular how metaphorical landscapes shift over time, mapping at the same time larger social and political developments. The essay ends by showing how scientific images and metaphorical framings interact and how they shape scientific and popular discourse on nature, as well as our understanding of the global environment.     

The Impact of Global NGOs on Japanese Press Coverage of Climate Negotiations: An Analysis of the New “Background Media Strategy”

This article assesses the success of WWF Japan’s “Background Media Strategy” in influencing Japanese mainstream news outlets’ coverage of climate change negotiations. WWF Japan adopted this “Background Media Strategy” after the Bali COP in 2007; instead of lobbying, it aims to build journalists’ expertise. This article examines its success after seven years through three research approaches: the analysis of participant lists; two surveys (conducted in 2009 and 2015); and a content analysis of climate change articles that appeared in four large mainstream newspapers between April and July 2015. Based on these different data, the author concludes that the new media strategy was successful: Japanese journalists increasingly rely on information provided by WWF Japan and less on information provided by the government and industry. This experiment suggests that a new relationship between global NGOs and the media can improve environmental communications—an approach that could help advocacy groups around the world.     

“Science is Everywhere,but No One Knows It”: Assessing the Cultural Distance to Science of Rural South African Publics

ABSTRACT

In science communication, a prerequisite for reaching different parts of a society is to find out how these publics experience and interpret science. Since rural South African publics are perceived to exhibit a large cultural distance to science, the present exploratory study aimed to know in more detail how rural South Africans perceive and understand science in their local and social contexts. Theoretical notions on cultural distance and the methodological approach of segmentation studies were considered. Semi-structured interviews with rural South Africans were carried out in four towns (n?=?52) that differ with respect to having a large scientific installation in their vicinity, or not. Sensitively comparing local and social contexts helped identifying three different publics who differed regarding their perceptions of science; however, the large scientific installations only made a difference in perceptions for those publics who were generally less exposed to and less knowledgeable about science.     

“Single-minded,compelling, and unique”: Visual Communications,Landscape, and the Calculated Aesthetic of Place Branding

Place branding strategies play a significant role in the professional composition of landscape imagery, including the depiction of “natural” landscapes. In this paper, Brand Blue Mountains, a brand currently implemented in the Blue Mountains region (Australia), is discursively analyzed. The brand sets out an all-encompassing “Vision” defining the identity, values and personality of the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains landscape, summarized in the tagline Elevate Your Senses. This “vision” is visually translated into a strictly coordinated and copyrighted suite of logos, graphic design, color, fonts and various photographic styles. Analysis reveals that the degree of control that place brand strategists seek to exert over the visual expression of landscape identity is significant. A highly selective narrative of positive nature-based sensory experience is constructed through the holistic application of contemporary visual media. The brands' communications strategy naturalizes and reinforces a particular market-friendly version of place. The framework that brands set for the representation of landscapes overall amounts to an exercise in calculated aesthetics, whereby the form and content of landscape images of various kinds is measured to achieve the greatest market differentiation and impact which technologies allow. The result of this calculated aesthetic system, with its taglines, saturated color, careful composition and magazine-format brevity, is a reduction in the complexity of landscape representations and a perpetuation of nature stereotypes.     

“A Short Burst of Inconsequential Information:” Networked Rhetorics,Avian Consciousness,and Bioegalitarianism

This essay uses the concept of “avian consciousness” to reconsider assumptions about human communication and theorize networked rhetorics. By adopting an ornithomorphic frame, I critically read Don DeLillo's The Body Artist as an exploration of overlaps between human and avian consciousness. I then argue that avian consciousness provides a richer metaphor for understanding networked rhetorics than autistic consciousness, which is an increasingly dominant trope for explaining interaction with digitally networked media. I explore how Twitter, explicitly modeled on avian communication, can be understood as circulating information in ways analogous to the contact and assembly calls of birds. The essay concludes by noting that seeing avian features in human communication diminishes the perceived gap between human and nonhuman animal, holding out hope for a more bioegalitarian relationship between species.