Beyond Frames: Recovering the Strategic in Climate Communication

Abstract

Recent calls for communication scholars and practitioners to identify effective communication means for mobilizing constituencies to address climate change often fall to distinguish between communicative acts that “mobilize” and mobilization that enables a particular end. The latter presupposes an account of the intentional or strategic alignment of mobilization, that is, the predicted or assumed relationships among a mobilized public, the mode(s) of influence or leverage this creates, and the expected consequences of such influence, i.e., how specific communicative efforts are related to outcomes or “effects” within a system. This essay argues that the neglect of strategic alignments in some recent climate communication campaigns have caused these campaigns to be non-adaptive at the scale and/or urgency required. Drawing on case studies of the 2007 Step It Up initiative and the Sierra Club's “Beyond Coal” campaign, the essay proposes viewing the strategic as an heuristic for identifying openings within networks of contingent relationships and the potential of certain communicative efforts to interrupt or leverage change within systems of power.

Keywords:

• Frame
• Mobilization
• Strategic
• Strategy
• Public Will Campaigns
• Climate Change

Notes

1. I am indebted to Greg Haegele, former Conservation Director of the Sierra Club, for this analysis of traditional mobilization strategies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

J. Robert Cox

Robert Cox (B.A., University of Richmond; Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh) is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, as well as the Curriculum in the Environment and Ecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research centers on environmental communication and public policy, particularly the challenges of climate change and energy policy. He is the author of Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2010, 2nd ed.). Cox also is a former President of the Sierra Club and has served as a director on its board since 1993. He is currently the Sierra Club's vice-president for Mission/Strategy