Environmental Communication as a Discipline of Crisis

Abstract

This essay interprets Cox's keynote as a call for environmental communication to reorient itself as a form of ideological criticism and identifies the potential pitfalls of heeding that call. First, the author revisits key arguments surrounding the practice of ideological criticism in Communication Studies and articulates their relevance to discussions about the mission and purpose of environmental communication. Second, he suggests that an uncritical embrace of the rationale for a “crisis discipline” may perpetuate problematic assumptions about communication, both as a social practice and as a scholarly discipline. Third, he argues that such problems may be sidestepped by making environmental crisis itself a central concept and object of environmental communication inquiry, such that environmental communication does not merely respond to crisis but becomes a discipline of and about crisis. A focus on the dynamics of crisis, the author concludes, entails a persistent concern with judgment in its political, scholarly, and pedagogical contexts.

Keywords:

• Crisis
• Ideological Criticism
• Transmission
• Model of Communication
• Perspective
• Judgment

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Phaedra Pezzullo for her feedback on the initial draft of this essay.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Steve Schwarze

Steve Schwarze is associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Montana