[Commlist] CFP: Environment, Nature and Communication in the Anthropocene Era

Call for papers:“Environment, Nature and Communication in the 
Anthropocene Era”

Scientific Journal "/Revue française des Sciences de l'Information et de 
la Communication/" (RFSIC - French Journal of Information and 
Communication Sciences) - English papers are welcome.

https://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/8519

Coordination: Céline Pascual Espuny (Univ. of Aix-Marseille, France) and 
Andrea Catellani (UCLouvain, Belgium) - Research group Communication, 
environment, science, society

Inscribed in the international public space since the 1970s, the 
environment is today the source of many communication practices in our 
societies. It covers a broad and matrix-like discursive perimeter, where 
notions such as ecology, ecological transition, sustainable development, 
corporate social responsibility (CSR, which includes an environmental 
dimension), Anthropocene, and even collapse, reflect physical, economic, 
political, scientific, but also cultural and symbolic realities that are 
related but different. These realities are largely present in the field 
of communication, public and private, professional, expert or lay, 
strategic or spontaneous. Communication practices are not only an 
expression but also a vector and a factor in the construction of the 
cultural presence of nature and the environment, and of the 
transformations of this presence. Our images of nature, the environment 
and ecology are (also) communicative and trivial "beings", caught in the 
constant interaction between science, art, economics, politics, 
spirituality, society - and personal, more or less mediatized, sensitive 
experience (that of "mega-fires" and extreme weather events, for example).


At a time when pressures are coordinated and overlapping, whether 
anthropogenic, climatic, biological, social, political, economic or 
moral, communication practices play a key role. They are called upon 
from all sides, invoked to raise awareness, and considered necessary in 
the emergence of participatory and co-constructed mechanisms. However, 
these practices - particularly in the area of organizational and 
strategic communication - are still the victims of suspicions of 
manipulation and "greenwashing" practiced in the previous decade and 
still latent and resurgent. Media information on the environment at a 
time of anthropogenic challenges is caught in the tensions between 
different economic, political, moral and societal imperatives, in a 
context of societies that are often themselves in contradiction between 
different values, and between values and practices ("values-action 
gap"). For some time now, the Internet has been the meeting place for 
different communication (and societal) projects, for awareness raising, 
polemics and sometimes contradictory mobilizations.


In view of these constraints and tensions, what can information and 
communication sciences say today, in a critical and scientific way, 
about this polymorphous reality constituted by environmental 
communication practices? How are the links between Nature and Ecology 
grasped, as soon as the practice of communication is practiced? Does 
environmental communication present a different profile within the vast 
field of objects analysed by information and communication sciences, 
given their particularly "trivial" nature as places of intersection of 
all tensions, expectations and disappointments?


In this issue we will focus in particular on scientific contributions 
that propose an analysis of the specificities of so-called environmental 
communication, based on a solid methodology and anchored in information 
and communication sciences. The aim is explicitly to collect the most 
recent points of view and results in order to make them visible and show 
the solidification of a real research sector, which tends to go beyond 
the dispersion of individual contributions to aim at a form of 
institutionalization, for example in the form of an association of 
researchers (IECA), sections in the major international associations 
(ICA, IAMCR), and in France with a GER (study and research group 
"Communication, environment, science and society") within the French 
society of information-communication (SFSIC).


This issue aims to be open to the different trends and theoretical and 
methodological approaches of information-communication researchers 
dealing with environmental themes related to communication. 
Contributions may be integrated into one or more of the following areas, 
or be of a cross-cutting nature.


/Controversies, polemics and media forms/

Environmental issues are at the origin of tensions, polemics and 
debates, which are expressed, among other things, in the media and in 
the different spheres of the social-digital media, but also in more 
"physical" events, movements and confrontations. The challenges of 
climate change, pollution, biodiversity and the habitability of the 
planet, and their variations on local and territorial issues, are giving 
rise to the voices (and images) of many actors in the age of 
digitization. This axis aims to collect the contributions of researchers 
who observe and analyse, with different methodologies and approaches, 
these controversies and other forms of polemics and agonistic issues, in 
order to understand their communicational dimension.


/Social and environmental actors: companies, activists, associations, 
governments, etc./

This axis focuses on the analysis of the communication practices of 
different actors who enter the public sphere with an agenda of claiming, 
transforming or protecting interests and/or values in relation to 
environmental issues. Companies and the economic world speak out in the 
form of discourses of responsibility (CSR-CSR, discourse on the 
construction of shared value, "green" communication and advertising, 
corporate activism), to show their alignment with social norms and 
trends, or to protect their economic model. NGOs and associations, 
activist movements, "influencers" and whistle-blowers, for their part, 
pursue projects of social and cultural transformation. Governments and 
public entities also intervene, between awareness-raising and 
institutional and public communication issues. The list, which is not 
exhaustive, should also include scientists, caught between the need for 
objectivity and the urgency of commitment, organizations such as 
churches and religious and spiritual groups, think tanks and the world 
of politics and political communication.


/Popularization of science and its challenges/

How to communicate environmental science, for example on the destruction 
of life and biodiversity and climate change? How does scientific 
knowledge enter the public arena, what dynamics and distortions, what 
challenges to the "authority" of science? The models of popularisation 
and "popular science" - for example, the deficit model - are coming 
under tension in the face of the challenges of "post-normal" and 
participatory "science", and in the face of the scale of 
"Anthropocenical" dynamics and trends (climate change, for example) that 
transcend the distinctions between different disciplines and discourses 
and tend to create short circuits between descriptive-analytical and 
normative-engaged regimes. From this point of view, the notion of 
expertise is also to be questioned, in its forms and appearances.


/Media, journalism, mediatization of the environment/

Researchers in information-communication have long, in the 
French-speaking world as elsewhere, investigated the ways in which the 
environment "comes to the media”. This presence is sometimes 
fluctuating, event-focused, sometimes partisan, in a context of 
technological and economic difficulties and changes in journalism in the 
digital age and tensions around truth and "information disorder" (the 
"fake news", loss of confidence in the media, changes in information 
consumption). The aim of this section is to show the latest advances and 
results of this research, in order to explore the (often different 
depending on the country) ways in which the environment can be "put into 
information". The axis is also open to research on the presence of 
environmental issues in media cultures in general, the audio-visual 
sector, and their interaction with the logic of cultural industries and 
the cultural consumption practices of individuals.


/The living, its representation and its communication/

The Anthropocene and the culture of the beginning of the 21st century 
see a change in the image of the "natural" world. The social sciences 
have shown the cultural and situated nature of the categorizations of 
beings and the relations between natural and cultural, between man and 
animal or plant. Scientific and philosophical discourses, such as those 
on anti-speciesism or on the intelligence of plants, percolate through 
literature and the press, interacting with the search for new forms of 
relationship (and resonance, to quote a title by Hartmut Rosa) with the 
living world and creation. This axis aims to question the mutations and 
reconfigurations of the cultural forms that frame the relationship 
between man and the living, seen from a communicational point of view.


/Communication and ecological transition, between criticism and 
instrumentalization/

At the time of the "ecological transition", communication (as a 
persuasive signifying action that transforms mentalities and behaviours) 
finds itself in an ambiguous position of "pharmacon": at the same time, 
decried as a source of manipulation (for example, in the case of 
"strategies of doubt", climate denials and fake news) and invoked as a 
necessary lever to bring about a more sustainable society (in connection 
with other marketing or psychological means such as "nudging"). This 
position deserves a question: how to interpret critically and ethically 
this "role" as an instrument of transition? How to deconstruct and 
identify the risks, limits and problems of this posture? On another 
level, what are the latest advances in the search for forms of 
communication that are engaging, transformative, and capable of 
empowering people in the face of necessary changes? How can 
communication contribute to changing attitudes and behaviours in the 
face of the "dragons of inaction" (Gifford 2011) that prevent behaviour 
change?


/Environmental discourse and narratives/

In the Anthropocene era, "facing Gaia" (to use a title by Bruno Latour), 
our societies are crossed by different discursive forms, which represent 
attempts to synthesize a complex and heterogeneous reality. This is the 
very nature of narrative mimesis, as Paul Ricoeur pointed out, but it is 
also the effort of meta-narratives and, more generally, of the great 
discourses that are organized around values and interests. This axis 
aims to attract researchers who are interested in the analysis of the 
"discursive formations" that appear today in the face of Anthropocenical 
challenges and concerns, and which manifest different and sometimes 
opposing accents, axiological universes and narrative structures. One 
need only think here of the discourses on degrowth, on voluntary and 
happy simplicity, collapse, ecomodernism, sustainable development. 
Formulas and visions circulate, carried by different actors with 
different logics and interests; these formations take shape in the 
media, in speeches, initiatives and actions. Information-communication 
approaches, for example narratological, rhetorical and critical, have 
here a space to express their analysis of this co-presence and tension 
between different discourses.


/Calendar/

- Issue published in No. 20, December 2020.

- Articles are expected for the last week of July

- Back to authors: last week of October

- Return of final articles: last week of November

Proposals for articles (between 30,000 and 40,000 characters including 
spaces, bibliography and footnotes) should be sent to:

Céline Pascual Espuny, (celine.pascual /at/ univ-amu.fr) 
<mailto:(celine.pascual /at/ univ-amu.fr)>, and Andrea Catellani, 
(andrea.catellani /at/ uclouvain.be) <mailto:(andrea.catellani /at/ uclouvain.be)>.

The guide for writing articles can be consulted at the following link: 
https://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/401


/Bibliography/

BERNARD, Françoise (2018), « Les SIC et l’“anthropocène” : une rencontre 
épistémique contre nature ? », Les cahiers du numérique, vol. 15 : 31-66.

CATELLANI A., PASCUAL ESPUNY C., MALIBALO P. JALENQUES-VIGOUROUX B. 
(2019), Les recherches en communication environnementale : état des 
lieux et perspectives, Communication, Vol. 36/2 | 2019 [en ligne], DOI : 
10.4000/communication.10559.

COX, Robert, PEZZULLO, Phaedra (2016), Environmental Communication and 
the Public Sphere, Londres et New York, Sage (5ème édition : 2018).

COX, Robert (2015), « Scale, complexity, and communicative systems », 
Environmental Communication, 9(3), 370–378.

D’ALMEIDA, Nicole (2011), « Le changement climatique entre image et 
texte », Recherches en communication, 35 : 17-36.

EVANS COMFORT, Suzannah, EUN PARK, Young (2018), “On the Field of 
Environmental Communication: A Systematic Review of the Peer-Reviewed 
Literature”, Environmental Communication, 12:7, 862-875, DOI: 
10.1080/17524032.2018.1514315.

Gifford R. (2011). The Dragons of Inaction: Psychological Barriers That 
Limit Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation, The American 
psychologist, 66(4), pp. 290-302.

HANSEN, Anders et COX, Robert (dir.) (2015), The Routledge Handbook of 
Environment and Communication, London, Routledge.

LESTER, Libby (2015), “Three challenges for environmental communication 
research », Environmental Communication, 9(3), 392–397.

LIBAERT, Thierry (dir.) (2016), La communication environnementale, 
Paris, CNRS éditions.

OGRIZEK, Michel (1993), Communication et environnement, Dunod.

PASCUAL ESPUNY, Céline (2017), Communication environnementale et 
communication des organisations. Logiques de publicisation, de 
circulation et de cristallisation, Mémoire d’habilitation à diriger des 
recherches en SIC.

PEZZULLO, Phaedra C., COX, Robert (2018), Environmental Communication 
and the public Sphere, London, Sage.

PLEASANT, Andrew et al. (2002), « The literature of environmental 
communication », Public Understanding of Science, 11(2), 197–205.

RAVETZ, Jerry (1979), Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems, 
Oxford, Oxford University Press.

SAINTENY, Guillaume (1994), « Les médias français et 
l’environnementalisme », Mots, (39), juin.

TREMBLAY, Solange, D’ALMEIDA, Nicole, LIBAERT, Thierry (eds.) (2018), 
Développement durable. Une communication qui se démarque, Montréal, 
Presses Universitaires du Québec.

VIGNERON, Jacques et FRANCISCO, Laurence (1996), La communication 
environnementale, Economica.

  ZASK, Joëlle (2019), Quand la forêt brûle, Penser la nouvelle 
catastrophe écologique, Premier parallèle.



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