From Environmental Campaigns to Advancing the Public Dialog: Environmental Communication for Civic Engagement

Abstract

This essay examines the claims of environmental identity campaigns regarding the issue of climate change. Identity campaigns are based on the idea that more effective environmental messages developed through the application of cognitive science by professional communications experts can favorably influence public opinion, and thus support legislative action to remedy this issue. Based on a review of the sociological and psychological literature regarding social change and mobilization, I argue that while this approach may offer short term advantages, it is most likely incapable of developing the large scale mobilization necessary to enact the massive social and economic changes necessary to address global warming. Specifically, theoretical and empirical research on the role of the public sphere, civil society and social movements shows that democratic civic engagement is core to successful social change efforts. However, identity campaigns focus on a communications process that centers on elite led one way communications, which falls to allow for any form of civic engagement and public dialogue. This undermines the creation of a democratic process of change and reinforces the professionalization of political discourse, leading to a weakening of the mobilization capacity over this issue of global warming. The essay concludes with the outlines of an environmental communication process that aims at enhancing civic engagement and democratic decision making.

Keywords:

• Social Movements
• Environmentalism
• Public Participation
• Environmental Communication

Notes

1. There is an extensive literature in this area (Alexander, 2006; Barber, 1984; Calhoun, 1993; Putnam, 2000; Skocpol, 2003; Sztompka, 1993).

2. For a summary of this debate, see Goldstein (2008).

3. For a discussion of alternative approaches, see Brulle (2010).

4. See, for example, Cavlovic, Baker, Berrens, and Gawande (2000, p. 40), Dinda (2004), Huesemann (2006), Jorgenson and Burns (2007), Jorgenson, Dick, and Mahutga (2007), and York, Rosa, and Dietz (2003).

5. See ecoAmerica (2009).

6. See Fenton Communications (2009).

7. See Graham and Sadowitz (1994), Shaiko (1999), and Skocpol (2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert J. Brulle

Robert J. Brulle (B.S., U.S. Coast Guard Academy, 1974; Ph.D., Sociology, George Washington University, 1995) is Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science in the Department of Culture and Communications at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA, USA. His research focuses on the U.S. environmental movement, critical theory, and public participation in environmental decision-making. He is the author of over 50 articles in these areas, and is the author of Agency, Democracy and the Environment: The U.S. Environmental Movement from a Critical Theory Perspective (MIT Press, 2000), and editor, with David Pellow, of Power, Justice and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement (MIT Press, 2005)