Environmental Communication

Catalog description

Introduces students to theories and concepts in environmental communication. Students engage in a theoretical and applied exploration of a wide range of voices (e.g., Citizen and community groups, Greens, corporations and lobbyists, scientists, anti-environmentalists, public officials and regulators, journalists) and a variety of environmental issues (e.g., climate change, water and air quality, genetic engineering and nanotechnology, mountaintop removal, logging, endangered species and extinction). Topics might include the social construction of nature; human relationships with nature through discourse, rhetoric, and communication practices; critical and cultural approaches to environmental discourse; communication about environmental issues in organizational, mass media, political, and international contexts; communication around environmental controversies; stakeholder dialogue and conflict; public understanding of environmental issues; public participation in environmental decision-making; environmental risk communication; environmental campaigns; and environmental advocacy, deliberation, and public relations. Main aim is to engender understanding of how communication constructs nature, threats to the natural environment, disputes about threats, and ways of living in the natural world.