Science and Environment Communication

The 21st century faces unprecedented challenges in the environment and the science fields. The meanings of issues such as climate change and energy, and the decisions taken about them, are associated with various communication practices. Communication research, therefore, provides a central contribution to current debates about scientific and environmental problems and issues of democracy, citizenship, and power.

The Science and Environment Communication section seeks to foster a strong, reflexive, and dynamic research network. Science is understood here broadly as research that has its roots in the social sciences, humanities, or natural sciences, including technology. Environment is also understood broadly as both the natural and the built milieu.

The section welcomes work that crosses a range of disciplinary (communication/media/cultural studies, science and technology studies, sociology, social psychology) and methodological (quantitative/qualitative/empirical/theoretical) boundaries.

Since issues classified as environmental and/or scientific are also political, economic, and social, this section aims to promote an integrated, interdisciplinary analysis of communication practices. This creates new opportunities for research and education, including collaboration with other ECREA sections.

Examples of topic areas include, but are not limited to: media representations of science and the environment; science and environment reporting; alternative and citizens' media; political and commercial discourse on the environment; dialogic, participatory approaches to communicating research-based knowledge; communication, democracy and research governance; public engagement with science and the environment; environmental and science activism; visualisation and environment communication; the digital shift in science and environment communication; digital capitalism and the environment; sustainability and media; Southern/non-Western and Western approaches to science and environment communication; (de-)politicisation of the environment; the environment and politics.