Communication Practices and Political Engagement with Climate Change: A Research Agenda

ABSTRACT

In this article, we call for a refocusing of research on citizens’ political engagement with climate change. In doing so, we argue that communication practices not only help create the conditions for political engagement but they also comprise the modes of such engagement. Our argument proceeds in four steps. First, we review the literature on public engagement with climate change, concluding that there is a lack of attention to issues regarding the political. Consequently, we make the case for a refocusing of research on political engagement. Second, we explain how the notion of political subjectivity helps us to understand the relation between communication practices and engagement with the politics of climate change. Third, we discuss examples of dominant communication practices that constrain citizen political engagement by depoliticizing climate change, and alternative communication practices that have the potential to politicize. We end by outlining the many research questions that relate to the study of political engagement with climate change.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• communication practices
• political engagement
• political subjectivity
• de/politicization
• citizens

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. There might of course be cases of progressive governmental policies and if so promoting the engagement of the public toward supporting and helping to implement them could be beneficial for the climate. However, as of yet, no government in the “Western,” “rich” countries has advanced sufficient and adequate responses that may meet the scale of the problem.

2. Communication practices are arrays of meaning-making activity involving language and/or other codes and modes of communication, mediated by power, knowledge, culture, institutional and social structures, technologies and artifacts.

3. Political subjectivity is a contested concept that has been elaborated differently by “classical” thinkers such as Althusser, Foucault and Deleuze. For reasons of space, we will focus on authors that have made connections with communication.

4. dcentproject.eu.

5. This calls for the development of approaches that critically integrate the analysis of those levels (cf. Carvalho, Pinto-Coelho, & Seixas, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

Anabela Carvalho’s work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation) [Sabbatical Grant SFRH/BSAB/1321/2013].