Abstract
A new decade, the ‘roaring 20ies’, with a very visible and tangible climate crisis, is crying out for solutions on a global scale, currently exacerbated in a COVID-19-related economic, social and cultural crisis. Sustainability is the moral compass for individual, community as well as organizational and institutional action for a new, regenerative human-nature relationship. At the same time, the increase in communication about sustainability (public discourses), of sustainability (CSR, policies) and even for sustainability (NGOs, Fridays for Future) challenges media and communication studies dealing with the critical evaluation of the principle of growth as master frame in public discourses and the necessity to communicate inconvenient truths of de-growth and abandonment. This chapter introduces the main provocations and concepts for sustainability communication in the future and, in doing so, further establishes sustainability communication as emerging field with rather unspecific boundaries.
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Notes
- 1.
This is the title the UN chose for their series of Round Tables Discussions held on April 21st, 2016 with the aim of inspiring new communication means and tools for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). See: https://www.un.org/webcast/pdfs/160421pm-sdgs-com.pdf, last accessed: 10.04.2020.
- 2.
For further information see: https://www.edelma.com/trustbarometer, last accessed 10.02.2020.
- 3.
An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 American academy award winning documentary directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore’s campaign to educate people about global warming, which has become a reference project for communicating about sustainable development.
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Weder, F., Karmasin, M., Krainer, L., Voci, D. (2021). Sustainability Communication as Critical Perspective in Media and Communication Studies—an Introduction. In: Weder, F., Krainer, L., Karmasin, M. (eds) The Sustainability Communication Reader. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31883-3_1
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