OPINION:
A need for enhanced environmental communication has been building over the past few decades. The need became quite apparent with the advent of angst over climate change and COVID-19. Professional communicators are tackling the challenge of understanding these and other complex atmospheric and public health topics and translating that understanding into solid public information that can be acted upon intelligently.
To this end, “Environmental Strategic Communication: Advocacy, Persuasion, and Public Relations” by Derek Moscato, an experienced journalism professor at Western Washington University, aims to “provide the would-be advocate, green communicator, or corporate social responsibility (CSR) practitioner with confidence to create, to engage, and to lead the environmental mission on behalf of organizations, mission-defined groups, and individuals.” The book intends to hit its target through a variety of means including providing “conceptual foundations, best practices, and real-world cases.”
“Environmental Strategic Communication” differs from many similar mass and interpersonal communication texts because, as the book states, “it integrates mass and public communication theory with perspectives from environmental communication and ecological theory,” “it allows for extensive focus on environmentally minded organizations” such as businesses, activists and non-governmental organizations, and government entities” and “aims to help students understand the principles embedded within corporate social responsibility.”
As the last point implies, “Environmental Strategic Communication” is structured for use as a college textbook with helpful summaries, keyword lists and questions for reflection at the end of each chapter.
Chapters include “Historic Milestones and Trailblazers,” “Public Relations, Advocacy, and Activism,” “Ethics,” “Public Scoping and Engagement,” “Media Relations,” “Community, Accessibility, and Diversity,” “International Communication” and “Grassroots Populism.”
The book’s overall recommendations include knowing your public and seeking common areas of benefit, establishing the public’s trust, engaging opinion leaders, becoming savvy about media products, techniques and contacts, building narratives through texts and visual aids, stressing social/environmental responsibility like CSR and looking for ways to involve the public — including those with serious disabilities — in outdoor activity.
Case studies and examples from real-world events are documented throughout “Environmental Strategic Communication.” One event recounted Greenpeace’s action spoofing Volkswagen’s “Star Wars” ad campaign. During the June 2011 Greenpeace prank, activists dressed as storm troopers distracted and disrupted drivers at rush hour in London to stress their climate change message challenging VW’s practices.
More recent traffic-stopping shenanigans in the U.S. by leftist activists inspired the Babylon Bee headline “‘You Know, These Fine Citizens May Really Have A Point And I’d Like To Learn More About Their Cause,’ Thinks Driver Blocked By Protesters for 3 Hours.”
The satirical piece featured the happy face of the driver, which belied the fact that such direct action can often elicit a negative reaction from the public, who may feel profoundly inconvenienced by activists’ rude tactics.
The book also relays how “brandalism”— an action whereby activist artists co-opted commercial billboards to advertise their own messages — was used in Britain in the fall of 2019 to convey green group counter-messages on climate change mitigation. Brandalism — a play on the word vandalism — reveals how tactics are evolving in the world of environmentalism. The book described such action as “a perfect example of the tradition of subversive rhetoric in environmental advocacy.”
Although “Environmental Strategic Communication” is geared to green communicators, industry representatives will benefit from this book with respect to understanding the apprehensions and approaches relevant to their community stakeholders (such as “customers, employees, and the local community”).
The perspective of these stakeholders may not embrace the same business concerns for the environment, which are somewhat mitigated by company shareholders whose interests may be limited to huge profit margins. The book’s chapter on “Corporate Social Responsibility” will help with understanding this corporate conundrum.
Not only do I recommend this book for valuable insight into environmental communication, but I plan on including “Environmental Strategic Communication” as a required reading when I teach my next academic class on environmental risk communication.
• Anthony J. Sadar is an adjunct associate professor at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, and co-author of “Environmental Risk Communication: Principles and Practices for Industry” (CRC Press).
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Environmental Strategic Communication: Advocacy, Persuasion and Public Relations
By Derek Moscato
Rowman & Littlefield, Dec. 15, 2023, 256 pages, $33
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