Page 75 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

58 K.-W. Brand

number of studies have shown how the specific selectivity of media reporting influ-
ences the dynamics of public discourse (Alexander 2009; Brand et al. 1997; Cox
2006; Hansen 1993; Neuzil and Kovarik 1996). The public media debate, however, is
not the only level on which adversaries communicate with each other. Many conflict
discourses take place initially, or largely, in the restricted domain of a specialist audi-
ence. This is especially true for debates about how to specify sustainable development
in the diverse fields of action, such as mobility, agriculture, housing etc.

Sustainability Communication as a Controversially
Structured Field of Discourse

What insights for sustainability communication can be gained from these different
sociological approaches to the analysis of the relationship between discourse and
institutional practices?
• A basic insight is that public communication is of central importance for estab-
lishing new institutional practices that are oriented toward the guiding idea of
sustainability. The interpretations that become dominant in public discourses not
only let certain institutional forms of regulation seem appropriate, they also allow
the interests and power structures connected with them to appear legitimate –
while others are rendered inappropriate and illegitimate.
• The approaches outlined above are also in agreement in that institutional
change towards sustainability requires resonant problem framings that are able
to mobilise relevant parts of the public so that the governing ideas and sto-
rylines of existing institutional practices can be called into question. It is a
critical weakness of sustainability communication that this has only been
achieved to a very limited extent: the traditional discourse of economic growth
remains dominant. This is largely due to the fact that although the concept of
sustainability meets with broad general approval, its diffuseness and the various
possibilities of interpreting it deprive it of the ability to mobilise a broader,
integrative reform movement.
• A third insight relates to the fact that sustainability communication can best be
understood as a discursive field in which competing actors struggle for the power
to frame sustainability problems in a publicly accepted way. To be sure, this
discourse field is integrated by a diffuse norm of global and intergenerational
fairness. There is also a large measure of agreement that sustainability problems
can only be solved by systematically linking ecological, economic and social
aspects of development. Nevertheless, sustainability remains a controversial
concept, behind which there are different interests, conflicting views of the world
and of nature as well as diverse understandings of development and societal reg-
ulation (see Dingler 2003; Dobson 2000; Dryzek 1997; Jacobs 1999; McManus
1996; Sachs 1997). There are basic controversies on ecological, social and eco-
nomic questions of sustainable development, but each issue also produces a