Environmental Communication
Contact
Group members
- Hanna Bergea
- Vera Brandes
- Camilo Calderon
- Alejandra Figueredo
- Klara Fischer
- Anke Fischer
- Nora Forell
- Ann Grubbstrom
- Rikard Hedling
- Lara Hensle
- Sara Holmgren
- Kornelia Johansson
- Clara A Jonsson
- Sofie Joosse
- Emily Montgomerie
- Amelia Mutter
- Stina Powell
- Teresa Sarasa Nagore
- Karen Schellhase
- Saloni Shrestha
- Martin Westin
- Seyifunmi Adebote
- Miron Arljung
- Susanna Barrineau
- Lars Hallgren
- Katarina Landström
- Fanny Möckel
- Kaisa Raitio
- Malte Rödl
- Nadarajah Sriskandarajah
- Christoffer Söderlund Kanarp
- Robert Österbergh
Related research projects
- Shadow forests – Re-thinking dominant forest cultures in times of emergency
- Algorithms and meaning-making on the environment
- Sámi democratic engagement in the energy transition - Advancing justice, legitimacy and participatory governance
- Mistra Environmental Communication
- Who Does What in the Forest? High School Students' Thoughts on the Future and Opportunities in the Forestry Sector
- Exploring the space “in-between”- Opening up polarization in forest communication
- Governance, Justice and Resistance - On the way to a fossil-free welfare society
- Sustainable urban lifestyles through nudging and citizen participation NAP
- Collaboration between Research and Advisory Services in the Green Sector
- Being and Becoming a Farmer in an Urbanizing Society
- Art and Environmental Communication
- Communication Capacity in Management of Swedish Mountain Resources
- Constructivity and destructivity in NRM conflicts
- Making Sense of Adaptation - The adaptation practice in a governance perspective
- LANDPATHS - Forest landscapes
- The Role and Responsibilities of the Municipalities in the Wording and Implementation of the Forest Policy
- Carbon farming as a climate measure - a farmer perspective
- To Stop Counting Bodies - new ideas for a gender equal forest sector
- Communication between Hope and Ambiguity - coordination in transformation of food systems towards circular economy
- A Balancing Act between Swift and Slow Planning - Reimagining deliberative planning in view of the urgency of sustainability challenge
- Governing the Bioeconomy Transition - Actors, values and trade-offs
- Beyond Idealistic Glorifications and Categorical Rejections - The co-construction of meaning in dialogue practices in natural resource management
- The Value of Stakeholder Participation in Collaborative Research Projects for Sustainable Development - A gender and intersectional analysis
- Researching and Decolonizing - Forest fires and indigenous landscape relations (ReaD-FIRE)
- Between trust and distrust – Expectations and knowledge coordination in policy production and governance of climate change and biodiversity problems
- Collaboration, Deliberation and Participation in Times of Post-truth Politics - The role of dialogue experts
- Decolonizing Land use Planning: Reimagining Sami-state relations in Sweden and Finland (RE-LAND)
- Improved Disease Control by Community Participation: The case of African swine fever in northern Uganda
- Creating meaning on the climate crisis — An investigation of commercial algorithms as communication participants
- The Properties and Relations of Maize - A multispecies study of the role of crop biotechnology in African smallholder farming
- Indigenous Rights and the Global Politics of Resource Extraction - The case of mining in Sápmi
- Expectations and knowledge coordination in wildlife management
Related research topics
At the Division of Environmental Communication, a diverse team with roots in political sciences, sociology, geography, science and technology studies and social psychology investigates the communication challenges associated to environmental and sustainability issues.
We consider communication as the joint construction of meaning, and conduct primarily qualitative social science research concerned with themes such as legitimacy, participation, power, resistance, conflict and learning in decision making and transformation processes.
Traditionally, environmental communication has often been understood from an instrumental perspective that focuses on the transmission of information, rather than considering communication as the social negotiation of knowledge, values, emotions and embodied experiences. Through our work, we aim to promote such a broader and more nuanced understanding of communication in research, policy and practice.
Our research spans a wide range of contexts such as:
- forestry,
- food production,
- nature conservation,
- climate change,
- wildlife management, and
- urban planning.
Much of our work combines micro-perspectives, zooming in on practices of meaning-making between individuals and groups, with macro-perspectives that scrutinize societal structures that shape these practices.
Our research thus often involves observation and interviews with individual actors – for example, farmers, public agency staff or journalists – but also an analysis of the societal norms, communicative expectations and materialities that guide their actions.
We work closely with practitioners, including public agencies, NGOs and industry, to help improve processes of public participation and collaboration. Ongoing work in close cooperation with other societal actors investigates, for example, the processes through which trust, but also distrust are constructed and performed in dialogue processes as part of natural resource governance arrangements.
Our research critically examines the potential, risks and limitations of emerging forms and infrastructures of communication, such as online platforms and AI – but also of storytelling, the age-old approach to communication that is in many contexts being promoted to inspire new ways of meaning-making about sustainability. Other work investigates political discourse at levels from the supra-national to the local. It aims to understand how societal change is produced or, conversely, stopped, how polarization is made and prevented, and how constructive debate about societal values, goals and visions can be encouraged.