Open Letters and Climate Communication: The Professional Roles and Identities of Researchers in Times of Crisis

ABSTRACT

Open letters are seen as a politicized form of climate communication, and the professional roles of researchers who engage in these communicative events are thereby cast into question. Based on semi-structured interviews with initiators to open letters, this article argues that while communication can be seen as constitutive and influencing new and emergent professional identities, there are also overlaps and continuations of already established professional identities linked to what appears to be politicized communication. In the case of open letters on climate change, communication can be seen as a reaction against academic professional boundaries, but also a cementation and reaffirmation of one’s professional role that follows institutional boundaries and policies. The implications of this study are that we should not ascribe transformative power to a specific medium of communication, but rather examine the practices and understandings of communicators who engage in such activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate communication
• professional identity
• open letters
• practices

Introduction

Open letters are generally defined as politicized forms of communication aimed at raising awareness and mobilizing support for an issue (Collins, 2019; Stanley, 2004). Following the dire predictions of the 2018 IPCC Special Report, academics and scientists across Europe took pen to paper and published open letters to call politicians to action and warn citizens of the dangers of climate change. A continued and sustained engagement in open letters among climate scholars followed suit. In some countries, the letters also sparked debates about the professional roles, tasks and practices of academics. One of the largest Danish newspapers, Berlinske, stated in an editorial: “Researchers’ climate call is political debate, not research” (Berlinske, 2018, author’s translation). Similarly, the Austrian newspaper, Wiener Zeitung, focused on the “activist role” of researchers and devoted its reporting to the open letter, discussing whether scientists should “take to the streets or would it rather be up to the politicians to draw conclusions from the facts?” (Stranzl, 2019, author’s translation). Thus, in some instances, the debate surrounding the letters came to shift from the issue of climate change and mitigation measures to the role of researchers in society.

Indeed, in the wake of the climate crisis, the professional roles of academics are not only discussed outside academia, but also accentuated within it. Words such as engaged research/scholarship (Joosse et al., 2020; Rozance et al., 2020) and academic activism (Laing et al., 2022; Cann & De Meuleneaure, 2020) have entered the vocabulary, and scholars are increasingly calling on the scientific profession to transform in order to support the necessary social transformations (Joosse et al., 2020; Rozance et al., 2020). These intended transformations also include the medium of communication: new/alternative means of communication are seen to influence audiences in different ways and may further social transformation (Rozance et al., 2020). Indeed, there are various new means used to communicate climate change, e.g. storytelling, visual communication, Ted talks, informal chats, news media and social media engagements, to name a few (Boykoff, 2019; Tøsse, 2013). However, the rationale of these communicative attempts is, perhaps understandably, to alter people’s understanding (Davis et al., 2018). A relatively unexplored area relates to how scholars are professionally affected by the various communication initiatives in which they take part. This is curious, as communication is not only an act of informing and transforming external matters; it can also affect speakers’ sense of identity (Felt & Davies, 2020). What is more, identity presents a resource that stabilizes forms of knowledge and may influence our actions in the world (Jasanoff, 2004). Yet up to now, dominant areas of research on environmental communication have concerned the mobilizing aspects and the content of what is communicated.

In this article, I shift perspective. Instead of focusing on the informational and mobilizing aspects of climate communication vis-à-vis an intended recipient/interlocutor, the aim of this paper is to explore how and in which ways climate change communication may affect the communicator’s sense of professional self, and their view of the role of science in society. Following conceptual outlines of communication as a constitutive practice that shapes how we engage in the world and how we come to understand it (Carvalho et al., 2017; Felt & Davies, 2020), I will focus on a form of communication on climate change that has hitherto received little attention: open letters. Given the political nature of open letters and their imprint in public discourse as opinion pieces, the question of how researchers engaging in open letter communication see their professional identity becomes central. By interviewing initiators of open letters, I ask: how do researchers view their involvement in open letters? And how do they view their professional roles in relation to the climate crisis?

Professional identities, roles and communicative practices: a conceptual framework

A view of communication as a constitutive practice highlights its productive character; it shapes how we engage in the world and how we come to understand it (Carvalho et al., 2017; Felt & Davies, 2020). This productivity also involves identities; communication can be seen to form, shape and remake identities, either in representations, for instance portrayals of scientific identities in popular media, or through communication activities (Felt & Davies, 2020, p. 16). To Jasanoff (2004) identities stabilize knowledge, give meaning and influence people’s actions in the world (Jasanoff, 2004, p. 39). In short, understandings of the world and of our selves are inseparable from the actions we take, which makes communication a vital space to explore, especially when the form of communciation – open letters – instigates debates about the professional roles of scientists.

Identity as a concept spans over several disciplines and the use of it warrants a definition. This article follows post-structuralist and post-humanist conceptualizations of identity, which see performance and practices as part of shaping and making identities (see French, 2020; Lamb & Davidson, 2005). This entails a blurring of the distinction between identity and social roles, which in other accounts of identity are separated because social roles are there viewed as external executions/practice of an identity (see e.g. Lea & Stierer, 2011). This article thus uses the terms professional identity and professional role interchangeably.

Research on evolving academic professional identities in a western context has long been a prominent point of discussion. For example, historical records illustrate how specific identities, such as “the gentleman”, were cultivated and enacted by scholars in order to gain trustworthiness (Shapin, 1994). Furthermore, there have been ongoing discussions regarding the specificities, norms, disciplinary practices – configurations of activities that make up a discipline – and the boundaries of the scientific profession (Hilgartner, 1990; Knorr-Cetina, 1999; Latour & Woolgar, 1986). Following the changing nature of scientific work, recent literature on identity suggests that scientific identities are also shaped in relation to specific short-term projects (Lamb & Davidson, 2005).

In many accounts, the role of communication in shaping professional identities takes center stage (Davies & Horst, 2016; French, 2020; Lea & Stierer, 2011; Neeley et al., 2020). For instance, the role of everyday academic writing practices – here defined as the production of journal articles, monographs, briefings, power point presentations, and administrative documents – in constructing and reconstructing academic professional identities has been stressed as an implicit aspect of academic identity formation (French, 2020; Lea & Stierer, 2011). Indeed, communication has been refered to as a constitutive practice that shapes how we engage in the world and how we come to understand it (Carvalho et al., 2017; French, 2020). It is not only what we communicate and how it affects audiences that are of central importance in matters of communication; instead communication can also affect the communicators’ sense of self (Felt & Davies, 2020).

Within the larger field of science communication, emergent forms of subjectivities have been explored in a variety of communicative contexts (see Cameron et al., 2020; Davies & Horst, 2016; Neeley et al., 2020). Yet, the constitutive aspects of communication in relation to academic professional identities are little explored in the field of environmental communication where primarily, and perhaps understandably, persuasive effects on audiences are prominent research topics (see Davis et al., 2018). In fact, in relation to climate change, Carvalho et al. (2017) call for more studies on different forms of communication practices and the subject positioning of actors.

In this article, practice is understood and inspired by a practice-theory approach to the study of communication (see e.g. Felt & Davies, 2020). To view communication as a constitutive practice builds on the idea that practices make up the social; they are productive and shape realities, including our sense of self (Felt & Davies, 2020; Schatzki, 2001). A practice is made up of so called “elements” – materials, understandings, values, emotions, actors, activities (see Reckwitz, 2012; Schatzki, 2001). These elements assemble in different ways and thereby shape particular events (Schatzki, 2001, p. 11). This paper views open letter communication as a constitutive practice and pays particular attention to interlocutors’ own understandings of which elements, e.g. actors, values, activities, they link to their open letter communication. In the following section, I elaborate on two emerging professional identities that have surfaced in relation to climate research in recent years. New communication forms have been pronounced as integral to these more explicitly engaged professional roles (see Frey et al., 2006). While this suggests that new communication forms are congruent with new professional self-perceptions, I suggest that a practice-theory inspired analysis of open letters also reveals tensions surrounding new professional ideals. The article illustrates how open letter communication can nurture new professional perceptions and agencies but also reaffirm existing professional identities, depending on which actors, understandings and values enter the communicative event.

The climate crisis and emerging academic professional identities: Engaged research and activism

In the wake of the climate crisis, spaces for new and emergent ways of being a researcher have appeared. Following discussions regarding the role of scholars in the politicized climate debate, studies illustrate that both climate scientists and the public see an increased need for public scientific engagement in climate matters (Cologna et al., 2021; Maeseele & Pepermans, 2017). But an unresolved issue concerns the role of politics in climate communication. For instance, Maeseele and Pepermans (2017) outline two approaches: one that problematizes the politicization of climate change and calls for consensus, and another that highlights the role of ideology and politics. Similarly, the role of politics in relation to emerging forms of academic professional identities is a matter of current climate debates.

In this paper I will discuss the concepts engaged research and academic activism. The term engaged research refers to scientific research that “has been conducted with the engagement and participation of the societal actors” (Rozance et al., 2020, p. 3). It has also been characterized as a move from research on to research with individuals and groups (Joosse et al., 2020, p. 758). Furthermore, engaged research is also said to require specific forms of personal skills and emerging subjectivities, such as self-reflexivity, openness and inclusiveness (Rozance et al., 2020). In contrast, the term academic activism has many different roots and does not originate in the climate crisis (Cann & De Meuleneaure, 2020; Laing et al., 2022). Academic activism can generally be defined as comprising socially impactful research, pedagogical commitment to social change, and efforts to balance cultural critique and political action (Weathrall, 2022, p. 6). One feature of academic activism is the idea of the university as part of a larger systemic problem and a hindrance to meaningful engagement in social and natural matters (Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2021). In relation to climate change, academic activism is merged into efforts to change the academic institution.

While engaged research and academic activism share some features, they also exhibit differences. Activist research is more explicitly political: the political is not only pronounced, but actively pursued. However, the stress on research communication is one issue that engaged research and academic activism have in common. Several researchers point out how appropriate communication skills further relationships with stakeholders outside academia, and thereby pave the way for engaged research (Joosse et al., 2020; Rozance et al., 2020). Furthermore, communication is seen to contribute to and facilitate activism and social impact (Joosse et al., 2020). This has resulted in calls for communication courses to better prepare academics to engage with other actors (Rozance et al., 2020). In activist literature, communication is also central and seen as a path to social change (Frey et al., 2006). In all these descriptions, new ways of being a researcher require new forms of communication, indicating a view of communication as transformative. But do alternative communication forms necessarily represent a change in professional self-understanding? Although interesting, these conceptualizations tend to disregard the context of communication and the existence of intersections between new and old practices. In this article, I complicate the picture. By using a practice-inspired approach to understand open letter communication and identity formation, I illustrate how open letter communication does not necessarily inform emergent identities in the same way. As Felt and Davies point out, practices inevitably bring multiple realities into being (2020, p. 30). Thus, while acknowledging the transformative potential of communication practices and their effect on professional identities, I also consider the role of institutional regulations and policies, existing scientific norms and practices, and audience-reactions which enter the open letter initiatives and shape subjectivities in different ways.

Materials and methods

The material for this article consists of 20 semi-structured interviews with initiators and co-authors to open letters on climate change. Following a mixed collection-approach comprising a snowball-selection, combined with two rounds of systematic collections of open letters using two different search engines (Google and Start Page), I collected 17 open letters on climate change and related specific climate issues. The letters were authored by researchers in a European context and published between 2018 and 2022. The letter selection was based on (1) geographical location (Europe), (2) epistemic content related to climate change, and (3) authored by academics.

I proceeded with interview-requests to initiators to the open letters, and conducted 20 semi-structured interviews, representing authors of 12 open letters (13 men and 7 women). The interviews were conducted during 2019–2020 and 2022 on Zoom, by phone or irl, depending on the location of the interviewee. The interviews lasted between 40 and 70 min, with a mean of 50 min. All except one of the interviews were held in English; the other language used was Swedish. For most of the interviewees, English was a second language. The majority of the interviewees came from the natural sciences (14), while three came from the humanities and three from the social sciences. At the time of interviewing, their professional positions varied between post-doc (6), associate professor (6), professor (6) and vice chancellor (2). Following the wishes of interlocutors to remain anonymous, identifying markers have been removed (e.g. locations and names) and replaced with x. The interview questions were divided into five themes: questions about the open letter initiatives, the content and style of the letters, the reception of the letters, initiators’ views of and rationales for engagement in science communication, and initiators’ general view of climate scientists’ role in society. The interview guidelines were sent to the interviewees beforehand. Following the nature of semi-structured interviews, follow-up questions were asked when I wanted to probe specific issues raised.

Two analytical and methodological devices to structure, organize and reflect on the collected material were used: practices and storytelling. These complemented each other and shed light on the constitutive matters of communication and related aspects of professional identity formations. Loosely inspired by the general premises of practice-theory and its related methodological approaches (see Reckwitz, 2012; Schatzki, 2001), I paid attention to so called elements of practice, which in practice theory may involve anything from discourses, materials, ideas, actors and values to emotions and language. These aspects come together in different ways and shape particular events, thereby forming a communicative practice (Schatzki, 2001, p. 11). In my practice-inspired analysis, I particularly paid attention to actors, norms and activities as elements of practice. Importantly, it is the interviewees’ own understandings of the “elements” of practice which constitute my analytical unit, and not in situ observations. By analyzing researchers’ mentions and perceptions of specific elements, several matters appeared central to the open letter initiatives: academic institutions, EU parliamentary policies and guidelines, audiences, and disciplinary or “traditional” norms and practices of science. These actors and ideas contributed to shaping researchers’ understandings of their professional engagements in open letters, and what this meant in relation to their professional identity.

The other analytical device employed is storytelling, which shares affinities with narrative analysis (see Sharman & Howarth, 2017). Following suggestions that the interview situation can be understood as a form of storytelling in which the participants tell stories about themselves, analytical attention is directed to the sequence of events, turning points, and to the emotions expressed in the interview – this is where meaning and identity supposedly emerge (Gabriel, 1991; Sharman & Howarth, 2017). Fundamentally, stories told in the interview are seen as means of making sense of the world and our positioning in it (Gabriel, 1991; Sharman & Howarth, 2017). By paying attention to the turning points and emotions in the interviews, I explore how researchers felt about the communication environment in which they were situated, and their relationships with different actors in this environment. Thus, the story elements were combined with the practice-inspired aspect of the analysis. After I outlined elements of practice which I discerned in the material, I paid attention to related emotions and turning points within these previous delineations. The storytelling device thus highlighted actors’ understandings and feelings regarding their engagement in open letters.

Results and discussion

The analysis is divided into two parts. The first section focuses on tensions in relation to certain elements that enter open letter communication, more specifically, the academic institution, scientific norms, audiences, and established academic writing activities, such as linguistic use and the production of articles. These tensions are central, as they bring about reflections on the professional roles of my interlocutors and illustrate the transformative potentials of communicative practices. The second section explores reaffirmations of professional identities. I illustrate how certain elements of practice that enter the communicative engagement also may reaffirm existing identities and contribute to a sense of professional continuation. In particular, I stress the role of institutions as an element that affects researchers’ perception of their professional role.

Communication and its transformative potential: Tensions and emergent professional identities

Some of the most common emotional manifestations among my interlocutors were frustration, anxiety and, in some cases, exasperation. These affective states were related to different aspects of the climate crisis: the lack of action, political inertia, institutional rigor, media miscommunications or public misrepresentations, perceived lack of voice and, specifically, the tensions relating to one’s role as a scholar in this environment. In this first part of the discussion, I will carve out these tensions, which are revealed in relation to the academic institution, established scientific norms and activities, and the audience, often thought of as the media.

First of all, to some researchers the academic institution emerges as an obstructor to meaningful climate communication. Open letters provided an outlet for these researchers to free themselves from the institutional rigor and what they perceived as muted voices in the institutional setting. One researcher described their engagement in the open letter as follows:

I think we all felt a bit frustrated because we had to speak on behalf of the x rather than speaking on behalf of us, personally. We couldn’t really tell the governments what we wanted them to do. So we wanted to try to maximize the impact in some way, and I think the reason why I did it personally, and x, my colleague who was really involved, is that we wanted to come away from the x conference thinking that we tried our best to convey the urgency of the climate situations to the delegates. So in a way, I think we did it mostly to ourselves, to try to walk away feeling we did our best and tried our hardest.

The open letter here emerges as a reflection on professional constraints; it becomes an outlet, a way to try to rebuke a confined role. As the interlocutor states, it was not only the information they tried to convey which was important, they were also doing it for themselves. Drawing parallels to the constitutive aspects of communication, it is not only what we communicate that is important; communication can also affect speakers’ sense of self (Felt & Davies, 2020). Indeed, communication encourages self-reflexivity, a feature integral to the professional identity of engaged scientists (see Rozance et al., 2020). Furthermore, in the example above, writing an open letter is at odds with institutional norms. From a practice-inspired perspective, the institution is particularly important to the interviewee’s sense of identity, and the engagement in open letters constitutes a way to broaden professional boundaries.

Similarly, another scholar commented that the open letters had caused them to think more about the institutional boundaries of their professional role, and the possibility of redefining these perceived boundaries:

Initiator:

It actually made me think about the boundary between communication, activism and academic life, and then I started to think that the critical situation that we are now in requires us to refine those boundaries and to redefine the question of science and academia and universities. And maybe then I started to think, and maybe those boundaries between activism and science, eh, were kind of built artificially to stop us from involvement, and yeah … 

Carin:

Mm

Initiator:

… and stop us from endangering the hegemonic system that we are in, so … And secondly, I think it is a question of a politicized university. I mean, universities are political. We have this problem in x, like whenever you want to deal with some serious problem, you have someone that says, no, no, let’s keep universities out of it. Because they say that universities are neutral, well, no they are not! So yeah, I was thinking about these kinds of questions.

In the above example, the academic institution and its norms present an obstacle to social engagement, and the interviewee, through the course of communicating via open letters, came to reflect on the boundaries they had previously just accepted. Indeed, the above account echoes activist research in that the academic institution must change in order to adequately address social and natural issues (Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2021). The centrality of communicative practices to activist engagement is also pronounced, as open letter engagement led the interviewee to rethink academic norms. The idea of the transformative potential of communicative acts is strongly present in the above accounts: communication is a matter of becoming and exploring, and the empowering aspects of communication are pronounced.

Whereas the above examples illustrate tensions in regard to the institution, strains also emerged in relation to perceived scientific norms. Indeed, these norms might look different depending on disciplines. Among the researchers interviewed who belonged to the natural sciences (the majority), the notions of objectivity and neutrality were more pronounced than among the interviewees from the humanities and social sciences, and thus became an issue many reflected on in the wake of the letters.

I don’t tell my PhD students what to do, and they don’t have to walk the same path as I walk; they can be objective and do their science and be more traditional. But I think that is increasingly not going to work. We don’t have a lot of time. We have to change things, we have to change the way the whole academic world works.

To this researcher, the engagement in the open letter was a way to rebuke a prevalent traditional “objectivist” stance. The interviewee belonged to a natural science discipline, and in this example, identity constructions along disciplinary lines are at odds with emerging professional identity formations. In many ways, the statement echoes literature on engaged science or activism (see Joosse et al., 2020; Rozance et al., 2020; Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2021); professional norms need to change in order to address the climate crisis. In the above example, this insight is juxtaposed with a particular element of practice that has entered into the communicative engagement: objectivist norms surrounding science. The interviewee not only sees objectivist notions as an obstruction to public engagement but also envisions a future academic institution that works differently, notions also present in academic activist literature (Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2021).

Indeed, ideas of a changing academic landscape were discernible in many interviews. For some initiators, the open letter engagement had laid bare the futility of their own professional engagement as academics in climate matters: if climate change was not addressed in policy and acted upon, there was simply no point of research. In fact, established academic activities, such as research and scholarly communication, are put in question. As one researcher put it:

Initiator:

We have the science that we need on climate change and having more studies is not what we need to actually solve it. So I started to feel like, I cannot sleep at night by just publishing more studies. And most of my studies were about what is bad and in what ways it was bad. And it is bad for agriculture, it is bad for wine growing, it is bad for ecosystems, it is bad for, you know, and at some point, I was just like, yeah, we know it is bad! Ha ha!

Carin:

Ha ha

Initiator:

And I mean like, having one more study in one more place, or site refinement of methods, is just an incremental improvement but this is just like not a meaningful way to spend my life, like, you know, it doesn’t matter if I get a Nature paper out of it or something, if what the paper says is like: “yeah, we cannot grow wine on planet earth anymore if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels”. Like, we should stop burning fossil fuels!

This researcher justified their engagement in the open letter initiative as one of the meaningful things to do, thereby providing an existential dimension to their engagement. In their narrative of events, traditional academic undertakings and established professional activities are increasingly meaningless; instead, meaning emerges from direct engagement with the world. Put simply, scientific work is futile if the object of study is disappearing due to climate change. This statement also illustrates differences from scientists’ generally felt obligation and duty to communicate their findings to the public and policy makers (see Besley & Nisbet, 2013). Indeed climate science introduces an existential dimension, an urgency for action, which renders traditional professional activities meaningless. The element of practice that here causes tension in relation to the communicative engagement in open letters primarily comprises established traditional academic activities – research and the production of research papers. As a result, the interviewee sees solutions similar to those outlined in engaged research and activist literature; the crisis makes for an engaged and immersed form of science (Joosse et al., 2020; Rozance et al., 2020). In the case of the open letters on climate change, the communicative engagements could thus be seen as part of an ongoing reflection on what it means to be a researcher; the engagement and the crisis lay bare certain tensions vis-à-vis other actors and long-standing activities, norms and values.

The considerations concerning established professional practices and norms were also reflected in the language used in the open letters, and the initiators’ thoughts on linguistic composition. Researchers frequently stressed that the genre allowed them to have a stronger and fairly unmitigated voice – a new professional voice. As this following quote shows, the language used in the letter constituted ways to reform a professional role initiators felt was impotent and too cautious:

Initiator:

I was kind of a new voice to this kind of thing, so I was trying to bring in a new perspective, and one of the things I felt was very important was, and this is reflecting on my experience as an academic, you know, academics frequently feel like we are powerless and our voices aren’t heard, so for me what was really important was writing it in such a way that the academics would be seen by the public to be asserting themselves and making their voices heard.

Carin:

Mm … 

Initiator:

And I wanted to write it in a very direct, honest way. So normally, working in academia, and you know, I have years of experience, academics tend to tone things down. You know, they don’t like to be very … you know, they don’t like to be direct or too assertive. They are usually very cautious, very, very cautious about reporting things and also, things are communicated in a very non-emotional way. And with this first letter, I wanted it to be with the academic voice being loud and emotional, so I wanted it to portray a sense of frustration, you know, a bit of anger, and I think that came through.

In the quote, attempts to restore power are launched through linguistic means. There is also a refutation of established academic norms of being cautious and unemotional; on the contrary, this interlocutor sees the open letters as a way to empower and change academic identities. While this kind of linguistic use is viewed in a positive light, it could also present backlashes if the content became interpreted as exaggerations by other actors, e.g. the general public, media or politicians. Here, the audience, primarily represented by the media, enters the equation. Previous studies have shown that climate scientists fear misinterpretation by the media, an issue which influences researchers’ public communication strategies (see Post, 2016). Although my interviewees did not explicitly voice such fear, one had picked up on the reactions to the open letter in the local media, which they found highly unfair:

So we are suddenly the ones who, through our science communication, dramatize. But we do it on the basis of our facts and the facts are pretty dramatic! But the baseline is not dramatic enough, there is not enough emergency! There is too much confusion around the fact that we need to act fast. So our role then is a bit strange … but again, when you look back at our letter, that is just science communication.

This researcher stressed how they came to play a strange “role”, which the reactions to the letters produced. To the initiator, communicating through open letters was a legitimate academic practice based on facts, and the “drama” was not caused by linguistic exaggerations, but by the media trying to undermine scientific credibility. This practice stands in contrast to previous research, which has shown climate scientists trying to avoid communicating in ways similar to environmental activists for fear of being labeled unscientific and dramatic (see Tøsse, 2013). However, in this study, researchers are actively striving to present the dramatic outcomes of the climate crisis, while at the same time carving out a professional role which embraces social engagement. In this case, the co-productional aspects of identity become more pronounced; new professional roles are co-produced, enmeshed in the reactions of others. The empowering narrative that surrounds new communication practices (Cameron et al., 2020; Carvalho et al., 2017) is thereby challenged and made dependant on the contextual interactions with other actors. Thus, open letter engagement can be seen as an empowering act encouraging reflections on professional roles, but depending on the context it can also project identities that chafe against the self-perceptions of the interviewees.

The idea of an engaged or activist scientist in these reflections is omnipresent. While my study cannot state that one or the other of these emerging professional identities in a climate context stood out, it is nevertheless clear that there are reflections and re-considerations regarding one’s professional role, and that public communication emerged as a reflexive practice with the potential to change researchers views of their profession, its norms and practices.

Contingencies and reaffirmations of existing professional roles and subjectivities

In the previous section, the tensions and ruptures laid bare by open letter engagement can be seen in relation to the so called productive character of communicative practices in a new medium (Carvalho et al., 2017). However, a different medium of communicating does not necessarily equate to a departure from earlier ideas and understandings of one’s professional role. How academics understand actors in the larger context of science communication may also influence their professional subjectivities. It is therefore important to acknowledge the reaffirmations of existing professional identities reflected in communicative practices. In this section, some elements, to use a practice-theory inspired term, come across as particularly relevant to reaffirming interviewees’ professional identities – institutions.

Interestingly, some of the tensions in the previous section were directed at and constructed in relation to the academic institution. However, it is also notable that university institutions and communication polices on different governmental levels also provided interlocutors with a supportive framework that encouraged open letter communication. In fact, policies of the European Commission for universities and science communication stress the importance of public outreach (EC, 2016), and several of the universities in my study stress the so-called third mission – public communication of research results – as a vital professional task. While these policies do not explicitly support open letter communication, many initiators were aware of these policies and stressed the integration between open letters and science communication, thereby negating the novelty of this practice to the professional sense of self. For instance, one open letter initiative started from a sense of ethical duty to inform and support striking school children. The scientists perceived the children to be in the right, but the media ridiculed the children for not being able to convincingly articulate the dangers of climate change. The interviewees thus wrote a letter to the children, stating facts on climate change. The initiative was well received, and prompted the researchers to engage in an open letter, informing politicians and civil society about climate change and demanding an end to fossil fuels. When asked about how they saw their engagement in these activities, the researchers declared it to be part of their scientific outreach. The engagements, as this group of initiators saw them, were part and parcel of being a scientist, but the climate crisis made this ethical duty even more pressing and the engagements more intense. More fundamentally, they also perceived these engagements as institutionally encouraged and apolitical; a perception which chafes with visions of academic activism, where science in any form is political and where the institution serves as an obstructor to meaningful engagement (see Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2021). While some interviewees stressed their engagement as apolitical, others intended it to be political, albeit not in any way that would make it activist. Instead, the academic institution was seen to encourage political engagements, albeit indirectly rather than explicitly. All of the countries in this study had ratified the Paris Agreement, and the universities to which the interviewees were affiliated were public institutions, thus falling within the jurisdiction of state institutions. As such, the universities adhere to certain values that encourage climate communication, as this researcher points out:

If you look at the university, not only x university, the missions of the universities and the guiding documents, like the binding agreements of how the ministries are funding the institutions, like where we get all our millions of funding, there are some basic principles formulated in the contract. If you look at it, all universities pledge in relation to the government that “we are sustainable, we speak out for sustainability, we treat the climate issue for the benefit of society”, so there is a value-based mission in the background if you look at it. And that makes it relatively easy to say, “well, now, I am going to say based on the scientific facts, and the values of our institutions – human rights, the common good, the service to the society – that is, the ethical core values of our institution”. So I say, based on these core values, and the scientific facts and knowledge I have amassed, this is the particular statement.

In this interview, communication relating to climate change, whether through conventional or non-conventional means, is de facto encouraged and sanctioned by the institution, even if the institution may not explicitly advocate specific practices. Institutional values of sustainability make scientific and value-based communication on behalf of individual researchers perfectly acceptable. To this researcher, institutionally sanctioned values negate the tension some researchers experienced between engaging in open letters as a politicized form of science communication, and the perceived neutrality of conventional forms of science communication. As such, values that are occasionally described as unscientific cease to be unscientific when the academic institution adheres to them. There is thus a contingency between open letter communication and the institution. In many respects, an engaged form of science, as outlined in the literature (Rozance et al., 2020; Joosse et al., 2020), is already embraced and performed by institutions and researchers alike.

Finally, professional academic activities may also play a role in defining and allowing certain forms of activism. Depending on how initiators viewed their work tasks, activism could be seen as a scientific undertaking. In the following quote, the interviewee stresses that open letter communication is a form of activism, but at the same time a particular scientific, professional form of activism that allows researchers to stay within professional boundaries:

Activism and communication are somehow connected. We wanted this letter to be a first step to … like, maybe not activism but action. I’m afraid that our enthusiasm has been a bit burned out during the summer. I don’t know, we were trying to talk with some people, like the chancellor of our university and it was like reaching a wall … But like, yeah, our letter, it is communication because we wanted to communicate, but for us, it was also an obvious form of activism, like, what can we do as scientists? Well, we can actually write, right? Or give lectures. That is what we can do as people working in the university. Like of course we can be activists, but that is more a spare time activity … So for the time being, we cannot invade minds or throw rotten eggs on banks, like, we can do that as citizens and maybe we should, ha ha, but we don’t as scientists. So what can we do to change things? Like, these kinds of actions that are linked to the written word and communication, so that is what we did.

In the quote, academic work tasks present a yardstick for different types of activism: civil activism, where bodies are involved, where eggs are thrown and windows smashed constitutes one type of activism better suited for laypeople, whereas scientific activism comprises words, lectures and different forms of communication, such as open letters. Indeed, communication through open letters is here defined as an obvious form of activism for scientists.

In the above accounts, I have elaborated the contingencies between institutional values, policies and academic activities stipulating what science is and should do, which the interviewees bring into open letter communication. These values also influence how interlocutors view and understand their engagement and professional selves. In these accounts, it is foremost institutions which enable and support emerging professional roles. Open letters can thus be viewed as a type of engaged and immersed science as described in literature (see Rozance et al., 2020; Joosse et al., 2020), but they do not necessarily break with central professional ideas circumscribing what it means to be an academic. Similarly, the institution is not always the antagonist and a barrier to professional development and transformations – it can be a resource that justifies certain communication practices. The transformative potential of communicative acts is therefore contingent on what elements of practice enter the engagement and how they are interpreted. Open letter engagement can be transformative or just another work task among many.

Conclusion

This article sheds light on both the transformative aspects of communication and the contingencies of communicative practices. While there is an overarching consensus among my interlocutors that the climate crisis accentuated the scientific duty of public communication, there were differences as to whether or not the crisis and the engagement in open letters resulted in tensions or contingencies with current professional roles. Open letter engagement could pave the way towards a new professional role, as expressed for instance in the activist discussions, the outline of the engaged, emotional and loud academic. But likewise, the crisis and open letter engagement could also be interpreted as a contingency of one’s current role and a regular communication activity, as expressed in the discussions of the values of the institution. In this sense, the outcome of this study has more in common with the literature depicting an engaged scientist, as opposed to an activist scientist. While academic activism sees the institution as an antagonist (see Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2021; Weathrall, 2022), this paper illustrates that this does not have to be the case. Indeed, there are both overlaps and tensions between an institution giving rise to contention and protests, while at the same time encouraging social immersion and research that produces social impact. Thus, viewing scholars’ engagement in open letters as either political or non-political is not a useful distinction for understanding these engagements.

Taking a practice perspective directs attention to the multiple realities of events. The examples in the article thereby also illustrate the limits to treating genres as indications of new professional paths or political engagements. Likewise, the practice-approach sheds light on how important actors can be interpreted differently among interlocutors and give rise to different professional self-perceptions, as exemplified in interviewees’ view of the academic institution as both an antagonist and an encouraging force for change. Indeed, since most academic institutions in this study do not explicitly push for or advocate their sanctioned values, at least with regard to sustainability and climate change, they serve as sources of interpretation among my interlocutors. As such, they enable multiple understandings of professional identities. A tentative conclusion is thus that, if institutions want to encourage new professional roles and ways of practicing science in the wake of the crisis, they can explicitly do so by communicating their stated values, providing researchers with a robust institutional framework to lean on.

Finally, by focusing on the constitutive aspects of communication we can move away from ideas of communication as transmission, primarily affecting others. What this study has shown is that communication may affect the communicator. And given the urgency of climate matters, how actors in the climate environment come to envision themselves is arguably a central question: self-perceptions stabilize what we know (Jasanoff, 2004, p. 39), which may also influence the actions taken to mitigate climate change. This study explored the constitutive aspects of communication by focusing on the experiences of climate researchers’ engagement in open letters. Limitations may thus present themselves in relation to the specific topic chosen and to the communication form. This is also why more research on identity and the constitutive aspects of different forms of communication is important: it can shed light on emerging professional subjectivities and informants’ view of their role in the climate crisis.

Declaration of interests

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to Björn Ekström, Jutta Haider and Björn Hammarfelt and three anonymous peer reviewers for their constructive critique on draft versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).