Frontiers in Communication: Science and Environmental Communication invites submissions to be published as part of a Research Topic exploring the de-Westernization and diversification of environmental communication. Environmental communication research has long been dominated by US and European scholarship. Its specific focus areas—including climate change communication, news media content analysis, and media effects research—have largely been aligned with minority world perspectives. Approaches beyond the ‘Western,’ which enable diverse voices and perspectives grounded in critical, cultural, or humanistic traditions have tended to be marginalized. This regrettable status quo in environmental communication research often results in the extrapolation of assumptions, theoretical considerations, and methods from privileged minorities and ‘the West’ to the lived experiences of the global majority. Environmentalism is a material reality to many people around the world and appropriate theorizing of communication processes in such contexts is needed. Despite some progress since the 2000s when the first calls for the de-Westernization of communication studies emerged, meaningful shifts in the field of environmental communication, specifically, are minimal. Among the many barriers to inclusivity, practical and systemic problems such as funding, incentives, and language—among other obstacles—are difficult to overcome.

The goals of this Research Topic are two-fold, and are grounded in broader discussions in communication research about diversification and de-Westernization. First, the Topic amplifies existing calls for a more inclusive field of environmental communication research, to expand beyond routinely prioritized perspectives that entrench inequalities within and between countries. This call will therefore explore strategies and tactics that could allow for existing barriers to diversity and to access for global voices in environmental communication research to be overcome. The Topic accordingly seeks articles from researchers in disparate global contexts, including the Global South, that speak directly to the dismantling of those barriers. Second, the Topic also seeks to highlight empirical scholarship grounded in theoretical considerations developed for non-Western contexts. As such, this article collection will act as a focal point for thinking that seeks to meaningfully expand the environmental communication discipline to voices, methods, and concepts not usually heard in research publications in the discipline.

The Research Topic calls for contributors to address a range of themes and subject areas concerned with enabling—and learning from—typically marginalized or excluded voices in environmental communication research. The editors would like to hear from researchers located in, or focused on, the Global South, and likewise from those who encounter barriers to research and scholarship in the field within other global contexts, including Indigenous researchers and perspectives. The Topic is interested in approaches that explore environmental communication as a process of meaning creation through multiple iterations across multiple types of audiences and, importantly, that challenge the hegemonic systems that are often implicated in global—and local—environmental harms. The editors will welcome papers taking a variety of approaches: empirical, conceptual, critical, humanistic, or posthuman. The Research Topic is also methodologically inclusive, welcoming contributions employing qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, participatory, or ethnographic approaches. Contributions could include, but are not limited to, the following indicative themes:

• appraising environmental communication’s globalness and inclusiveness, or lack of it, through systematic literature review
• language diversity and the Anglophone publishing imperative for EC scholars
• typology of barriers and enablers for diverse, global voices in environmental communication
• de-Westernization of concepts and methods in environmental communication
• empirical papers in environmental communication from scholars from, or based in, the Global South
• empirical papers that report multi-language, multi-country research in environmental communication
• papers that report participatory or co-produced research with communities that are often marginalized or whose voices are not usually heard in environmental communication research
• Indigenous perspectives and knowledges in the context of global challenges
• environmental communication research from Indigenous scholars
• perspectives in environmental communication from other often marginalized groups, including those impacted by inequality, racism, hierarchy, the digital divide, (dis)ability, age—both younger and older people—or discrimination based on sexual orientation.

We encourage multiple article types, including Original Research, Review, Mini Review, and Opinion or Perspective pieces. Please see more on article types and open access publishing fees here and here, respectively. To enable publication by Global South scholars, a number of publishing fee waivers will be offered. Assistance with manuscript translation may also be offered. For all enquiries on fees, potential submission topics or types, and translation, please send queries to gabi.mocatta@utas.edu.au.

Manuscript summaries of 700 words will be considered until April 30, 2024. Authors are required to submit summaries before writing full manuscripts. Summaries will be assessed for fit with the Research Topic within a month from being received, and authors will receive feedback from the editorial team by May 30, 2024. Full manuscripts will be accepted from June 30, 2024. The Frontiers continuous publishing model allows manuscripts to be reviewed and published from this date. Manuscript submission closes on December 1, 2024.

Submit your idea

Impact

Frontiers in Communication

Participating Journals

Submit your idea

Impact