Page 51 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

34 M. Adomßent and J. Godemann

accepted and supported by society. This requires a public awareness of the problem,
which however should not be stirred up by an alarmism as often takes place in
medial environmental reporting. Sustainability requires that short-term thinking be
replaced by long-term thinking: “long-term demands for coherence on the basis of
the sustainability postulate seem however (…) not to be compatible with the mecha-
nism of an alarmed problem awareness” (Grunwald 2004). Science is given the role
of acting in a critical fashion towards the public’s awareness of problems, i.e. either
sensitising itself for certain problems or relativising already established problems
and possibly modifying them. This function is a central interface of science to society.
In the context of sustainability science, communication can at this point be supple-
mented by sustainability communication, which knows the selection criteria and
communication structures of the media system but does not make use of this alarmism
itself to create attention. Sustainability communication has the role of sensitising a
scientifically generated awareness of problems to questions of sustainable develop-
ment and introducing them adequately into the public discussion.

Framing Sustainability Communication

This comparative assessment of environmental communication, risk communication
and science communication shows that there are a number of similarities that are
also constitutive for sustainability communication. All areas show a large number of
commonalities with the discipline of communication sciences, while at the same
time they are metadisciplinary fields of research that cross other scientific
disciplines.
All discourses are united by a topical focus, which (especially for environmental
and risk communication) are mainly directed at environmental and/or health rele-
vant issues. These are largely characterised by a high degree of complexity, which
given the reliability of scientific knowledge is always connected with a certain
degree of uncertainty. Accordingly target group specific communication about
uncertainty plays a central role – whether political decision-makers are being
addressed or complex factual matters are being presented in the mass media
(Kloprogge et al. 2007; Wardekker et al. 2009).
Furthermore all these strands have changed from a passive (self-) understanding
(communication about…) to an active intervention (communication for…) (Moser
and Dilling 2008). Instead of the educational transmission of information, the focus
will always be more on aspects of pluralisation and the participation of affected and
potentially affected individuals. It is noticeable how particularly for risk communi-
cation there has been a change from a corrective orientation to a preventative
approach, as has already taken place in other discourses. In this context it is only
consistent when the role of the media is considered as central across all disciplines –
especially regarding their function (social seismograph versus controlling authority) –
but can also be controversially discussed. The theoretical foundation of these
discourse strands has advanced in varying degrees. The most advanced is certainly