Engaged Communication Scholarship for Environmental Justice: A Research Agenda

ABSTRACT

As a discipline of crisis and care, environmental communication needs to address questions of environmental justice. This article argues that the most appropriate approach to studying environmental justice communication is engaged scholarship, in which academics collaborate with community partners, advocates, and others to conduct research. The article reviews prior engaged communication scholarship on environmental justice, and proposes four streams of future research, focused on news and information, deliberation and participation, campaigns and movements, and education and literacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Engaged scholarship
• environmental justice
• news
• deliberation
• campaigns
• social movements
• education

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Deja Thomas and Nicholas Spinelli for research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 This is a composite of several of the major definitions of the field, summarized at http://deohs.washington.edu/environmental-justice.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education, Santa Clara University [Grant Number 222].