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Chapter 8
Communication Theory and Sustainability
Discourse
Andreas Ziemann
Abstract Ecological and sustainability discourses are communicative processes.
This chapter focuses on communication theory in order to explore the communicative
and social aspects of sustainability discourse, in particular reflexivity, commitment
and normalisation. Consequences for sustainability communication are discussed.
Keywords Communication theory • Communicative process • Functional differen-
tiation • Characteristics of sustainability discourse • Sustainability communication
The interpretation of ‘sustainable development’ is as multi-facetted as its strategic
realisation. There are few communication theoretical analyses of this term, of its
discourse coherence and operationalisation. Research into sustainability and sus-
tainability communication often assign communication a secondary status – as if it
were possible to first discuss sustainability, then plan and implement it, and finally
communicate it. The opposite is the case. As soon as something has become an
issue – and individuals have made a series of specific contributions to that issue –
then communication is taking place. Neither sociality nor social structures, neither
technology nor ecology are independent of the communication of either given or
thinkable situations. It is only through and as communication that an event or an
object receives social relevance and meaning. And every event that is well known
today has already been through the selection and production machinery of the mass
media. The discourse of sustainability is also – as is ecological discourse in general –
above all a communicative process event within society. If an awareness of eco-
logical problems and sustainability is not communicated, then it is socially irrelevant,
even non-existent.
A. Ziemann (*)
Bauhaus-Universitaet Weimar, Fakultaet Medien, Bauhausstr. 11, D-99423 Weimar, Germany
e-mail: andreas.ziemann@uni-weimar.de
J. Godemann and G. Michelsen (eds.), Sustainability Communication: Interdisciplinary 89
Perspectives and Theoretical Foundations, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1697-1_8,
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011