Page 52 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

3 Sustainability Communication: An Integrative Approach 35

risk communication, which environmental communication partially refers to.
The latter is a special case to the extent that it is best realised or can be best realised in
sustainability communication and is an essential – of the discourses discussed above
perhaps the most important – building block of this integrative approach. Finally all
three approaches have in common a factual, a social and a temporal dimension and
extend over a sphere of action that can reach from the local to the global dimension.
These claims can be specified using the example of climate change, because
much of what is known or assumed about climate change communication is
inferred from studies in other fields (e.g., risk communication, science communi-
cation, (mass) media communication, social marketing or rhetoric). “Challenges
that communicators face in trying to convey the issue are somewhat typical for
many sustainability-related topics, as they encompass characteristics like invisi-
bility of causes, distant impacts, lack of immediacy and direct experience of the
impacts, lack of gratification for taking mitigative actions, disbelief in humanity’s
global influence, complexity and uncertainty, inadequate signals indicating the
need for change, perceptual limits and self-interest” (Moser 2010: 31).
Since media has no ‘magic bullet’ for informing the public, communication
designers have to make their best possible efforts to identify the information most
worth knowing and focus their communication outreach accordingly (Maibach and
Hornig Priest 2009). A constantly growing body of research explores what kind of
information is effective in influencing the public’s perception of climate change,
concluding that information should always be tailored to different public groups
according to their beliefs and attitudes. There is evidence that effective scenarios
might help people to relate to climate change, given that impacts can be presented
both for the near future and the longer term, and for socio-economic changes in their
local region (Lorenzoni and Hulme 2009; Ereaut and Segnit 2006; Segnit and Ereaut
2007). Visualisation of abstract phenomena might also be helpful. But care should
be taken in using frightening images because although they may initially attract
public attention, they are also likely to disempower individuals, distancing them
from the issue. As O’Neill et al. and Nicolson-Cole (2009) state, it is more fruitful
to use, in combination with dramatic images, ‘enabling’ images that the target audience
can relate to.
With regard to sustainability communication, as exemplified by the ‘Boulder
Manifesto’ for the field of climate change communication (Harriss 2008), the bottom
line should be a kind of resource communication that keeps in mind that, together
with natural and economic resources, people’s knowledges, abilities and skills are
the most important resources for change.

References

Beck, U. (1992). World risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage.
Beck, U., & Kropp, C. (2007). Environmental risks and public perceptions. In J. Pretty, A. S. Ball,
T. Benton, J. Guivant, D. Lee, D. Orr, M. Pfeffer, & H. Ward (Eds.), Handbook on environment
and society (pp. 601–612). Los Angeles/London: Sage.