Strategic Sustainability Communication: Principles, Perspectives, and Potential

This book discusses the evolution of the sustainability story in corporate, political, and environmental discourses as well as paradigms and theoretical approaches to better understand communication about, of, and for sustainability. The book aims to be a preferred resource for academics, scholars, students as well as practitioners in environmental management, communication management, journalism as well as sustainability studies. The authors elaborate on various conceptual perspectives on strategic sustainability communication and offer practical examples and exercises for making sustainability and related issues accessible and comprehensible, for co-creating social change and taking authorship in new emerging professions like Sustainability Manager and Officer.

Furthermore, the volume explores methodological as well as pedagogical innovations, complemented by case studies and interviews around existing strategies and tactics to create sustainable solutions (communication planning, campaigning, messaging, etc.). Thus, it offers students and instructors as well as (future) communication strategists and campaigners foundations, strategies, tools, and methodologies of communication for transformation and co-creation of alternative narratives. Professionals, advocates, and academics are attracted who are passionate about taking proactive roles in restoratively addressing the pressing interrelated sociocultural and ecological issues of our times and seek to be reflexive leaders and advocates.

Franzisca Weder is Professor in Organizational and Sustainability Communication at the Department of Business Communication at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria. Franzisca has 20 years of experience in researching, writing and teaching in the areas of Organizational Communication and Public Relations with a specific focus on Sustainability Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility. Before joining the Department of Business Communication, Franzisca worked as Associate Professor at the University of Queensland (School of Communication and Arts, Brisbane) and the University of Klagenfurt (Department for Media and Communication Studies, Austria); as Guest Professor, she worked at University of Alabama (USA), University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (GER), University of Waikato (NZ), RMIT (Melbourne, AUS) and University of Ilmenau (GER). Franzisca co-edited The Sustainability Communication Reader and Integrative CSR Communication, and her research appears in high ranked journals in strategic and environmental communication.