Course Description
Human actions that affect the environment are dependent on how we think and communicate about nature and the environment. This class analyzes communication patterns about nature and humanity's relation to nature. In particular, it examines messages of activists, scientists, governmental agencies, and industries relating to environmental protection.
Athena Title
Environmental Communication
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in COMM 3320
Non-Traditional Format
This course will be taught 95% or more online.
Semester Course Offered
Offered summer semester every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
By the end of the course, students should be able to: 1. Explain what environmental communication is as both a field of study and form of civic engagement 2. Understand how the meanings of key concepts in environmental discourses, such as “nature” and “risk,” are publicly contested and change over time 3. Understand how a variety of past and present communication-based efforts (discursive, visual, and embodied) address environmental challenges, including efforts within the wilderness preservation, ecology, and environmental justice movements 4. Analyze and describe how different stakeholders, such as NGOs, politicians, and industry agents, communicate scientific information in the context of environmental crises and policy debates 5. Articulate how multiple factors, such as cultural, economic, and political forces, affect the construction, reception, and impact of messages about the environment
Topical Outline
1. Scope and foundations: Communicating for and about the environment 2. Social/symbolic constructions of the environment in visual and popular culture 3. Conflict and collaboration in the “green” public sphere: public participation in environmental decision-making 4. Communicating ecological risk and environmental justice 5. Frame analysis and climate change polarization 6. Sustainability and food activism 7. Green marketing and corporate advocacy
Syllabus