Overview

The best-selling Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere offers your students a comprehensive introduction to the field of environmental communication. The updated Seventh Edition explores recent events and research, including the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on journalism, climate commitments of Big Tech, ultra-processed food policy, anti-plastics advocacy, expanding legal rights of nonhuman animals, and more.

Full Product Details

Author:   Phaedra C. Pezzullo ,  Robert Cox
Publisher:   Sage Publications Inc Ebooks
Imprint:   SAGE Publications Inc
Edition:   7th Revised edition
Weight:   0.800kg
ISBN:  

9781071922392

ISBN 10:   1071922394
Pages:   432
Publication Date:   05 December 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

About the Authors Acknowledgments to the Seventh Edition Introduction Part I • Communicating As, For, About, And with The Environment Chapter 1 • Defining Environmental Communication: On Trees, Wolves, and Plastics Communication as Symbolic Action: Communicating with and about Trees Communication Matters: Reintroducing Wolves A Crisis and Care Discipline Public Spheres as Democratic Spaces: From Ideals to Scapegoats Purpose: What Motivates Environmental Communication in the Public Sphere? Diverse Voices in The Public Sphere: Agents of Change Ways of Studying Environmental Communication Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Chapter 2 • Cultural and Rhetorical Environmental Discourses: From Apples to Zendaya Rhetorical Perspectives: On Apples Naming: From “There’s a whale!” to Advocating “Beans for Beef” Framing: On Plant-Rich Diets, Artificial Turf, and Farmer Backlash The Rhetorical Situation: Getting Our Feet Wet Apocalyptic Rhetoric and Melodrama: Silent Spring or Chicken Littles? Dominant v. Critical Discourses: Revisiting Water and Food Myth Eco-Celebrities: Cool or Cruel? Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Chapter 3 • Contested Meanings of the Environment: A Brief History Turtle Island Learning to Love Nature Wilderness Preservation versus Natural Resource Conservation Public Health and the Environmental Movement Environmental Justice: Linking Social Justice and Public Health Contemporary Movements Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Chapter 4 • Contested Discourses: Communicating Climate Change Early Awareness of Climate Change and the Technical Sphere Challenges to Communicating Care in the Climate Crisis Public Communication about Climate Controversies Early Climate Symbols: Tipping Points and Footprints Who is Hit First and Worst?: The Cruel Irony of Climate Change Climate Action Backlash: Uncertainty, Delay, and Disinformation Talking about the Climate Crisis Public Opinion Data: Backlash is a Minority—The Majority Care Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Part II • Environmental Campaigns And Movements Chapter 5 • Environmental Justice Movement: From Disobedience to Reinvention The Lifecycle of the Movement for Environmental Justice The Lifecycle of the Movement for Environmental Justice Reaffirming and Reinventing Movements for Environmental Justice Flipping the Script: Talking about Environmental Privilege Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Chapter 6 • Advocacy for Climate Justice: Moving from Cruel Irony to a Just Transition Climate Injustice: A Global Pattern Advocacy and the Dilemma of Social Change Inside or Outside, Take One: Articulating A Just Transition Inside or Outside, Take One: Disrupting Business as Usual Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Chapter 7 • Visual Rhetoric & Market-based Advocacy: From Boycotts to Divestment Visual Rhetoric and Nature Advocacy Seeing the American West Moving Images of Disasters Witnessing Biodiversity Loss through Projection Mapping and Documentaries Alert, Amplify, and Engage Three Challenges for (Digital) Engagement Market-based Advocacy Divest and Reinvest Climate Campaigns Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Chapter 8 • Environmental Advocacy Campaigns: From Resisting Toxic Pollution to Protecting Zuni Salt Lake A Warmup to Advocacy Campaigns: Critical Rhetoric Environmental Advocacy Campaigns An Advocacy Campaign for a Toxic Study and Redress in Mississippi An Advocacy Campaign to Protect Zuni Salt Lake from Strip-Mining Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Part III • Environmental Communication Here, There, Everywhere Chapter 9 • Environmental Journalism: From Narratives to Fact-Checking Environmental Journalism in the Public Sphere A Perfect Storm: The Decline of Traditional Journalism in the West Breaking News and Environmental Journalism Political Economy of News Media Media Effects and Influences Digital Storytelling and Environmental News The Impact of AI on Veracity: An Emerging Trend Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Chapter 10 • Green Advertising and Media: From Greenwashing to Sustainable Storylines The Environment and Popular Culture Sustainability Discourses: Public Goods versus Free Markets Corporate Sustainability Communication Greenwashing: Lies and Lawsuits Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Chapter 11 • Risk Communication: From the Trope of Uncertainty to Health Activism Dangerous Environments: Assessment in a Risk Society Communicating Risks in the Public Sphere The Precautionary Principle: “Better Safe than Sorry” Toxic Politics: From Privatizing to Publicizing Chemical Disasters Fracked: The Expansion of Hydraulic Fracturing and The Voices of Dissent Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Part IV • Disputed Environmental Laws and Disorder Chapter 12 • Possibilities of Public Participation: Food Fights & Toxic Politics, Continued Rights of Public Participation: An Overview Right to Know: Transparency and Access to Information Right to Comment: Involvement Advisory Committees on Toxic Pollution—and the Ideal of Collaboration SLAPP: Strategic Litigation against Public Participation Growth of Public Participation Globally Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Chapter 13 • Debating Voice and Standing: From Nature’s Rights to Intergenerational Justice Right of Expression and Right of Assembly Right of Standing: Who Legally Can Speak? Landmark Cases on Environmental Standing Reversing, Slowing, Or Reducing Global Warming as Injury Who Should Have a Right of Standing? Summary Suggested Resources Key Terms Discussion Questions Epilogue: Imagining Stories for Our Future Glossary References Index

Reviews

Author Information

Phaedra C. Pezzullo is Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, and a dual citizen with the US and Italia. Her interdisciplinary background informs her research on environmental justice, climate justice, just transition, public advocacy, and tourist studies. Her book, Toxic Tourism (University of Alabama Press, 2007), won four awards, including the Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book Award and the National Communication Association’s Environmental Communication Division Book Award. Among other publications, she coedited Green Communication and China (Michigan State University Press, 2020) and Environmental Justice and Environmentalism (MIT Press, 2007). She was a founding editor of the journal Environmental Communication and serves on its editorial board. She has volunteered on the Sierra Club’s national Environmental Justice Committee and Affinity Group Working Group, consulted with cities and counties on a just transition, and was a delegate at COP21 in Paris. Pezzullo is a founding co-director of the Center for Creative Climate Communication and Behavior Change (C3BC) on her campus. She also enjoys outdoor recreation and cooking a plant-based diet. Robert Cox is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His principal research areas are environmental and climate change communication and strategic studies of social movements. A internationally-recognized leading scholar who helped found the field of environmental communication, Cox is coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication (2015; second edition forthcoming), editor of the four-volume reference series Environmental Communication (Sage, 2016), and the author of numerous studies of environmental and climate change campaigns. He has served three times (1994-1996; 2000-2001; 2007-2008) as president of the Sierra Club, the largest grassroots U.S. environmental organization, and was also on the board of directors for Earth Echo International, whose mission is “to empower youth to take action that restores and protects our water planet.” Cox also continues to advise environmental groups on their communication programs. He regularly participates in environmental and climate change initiatives and has campaigned with former vice president Al Gore, singer Melissa Etheridge, and other public figures. He also enjoys hiking and trekking in the Himalayas, Europe, and the southern Appalachian Mountains in the United States.

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