Communicating the Future: Solutions for Environment, Economy and Democracy

by W Lance Bennett

We are facing an unprecedented environmental crisis. How can we communicate and act more effectively to make the political and economic changes required to survive and even thrive within the life-support capacities of our planet?This is the question at the heart of W. Lance Bennett's much-anticipated book. Bennett challenges readers to consider how best to approach the environmental crisis by changing how we think about the relationships between environment, economy, and democracy. He introduces a framework that citizens, practitioners, and scholars can use to evaluate common but unproductive communication that blocks thinking about change; develop more effective ways to define and approach problems; and design communication processes to engage diverse publics and organizations in developing understandings, goals, and political strategies. Until advocates develop economic programs with built-in environmental solutions, they will continue to lose policy fights. Putting "intersectional" communication into action requires acknowledging that communication is not only an exchange of messages, but an organizational process.Communicating the Future is important reading for students and scholars of media and communication, as well as general readers concerned about the environmental crisis.

192 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 3, 2020

Reviews

[Vivis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Neoliberalism is no longer sustainable. Our economy is at a stage of constant failure and the C-19 pandemic has revealed even higher levels of socioeconomic inequalities.
Nevertheless, during the last 20 years rightwing nationalism has been rising among the US and the EU due to the absence of credible alternatives and ideas for a different economic vision that secures a more sustainable future
But neoliberalism did not rose on its own. It was pushed into people’s mind through a brilliant political communication strategy which packaged one simple message: Freedom. And it was under this fake umbrella where it thrived, until “growth” could no longer offer “a healthier way of living, working, producing, and consuming” (EU president Ursula von der Leyen, 2010 at The European Green Deal presentation) and levels of inequality, poverty, corruption, and starvation began to rise.
Politicians who belong to this movement just as Trump in the US or Bolsonaro in Brazil have thrived in the middle of disinformation campaigns and environmental exploitation by bringing back nostalgic visions of the past as a way of rescuing people from corrupt elites that have ‘stolen’ their national sovereignty and offering a type of “Frankenstein economics that blend capitalism, austerity and welfare” (Bennett, L. 2021, p.144) with an emotional and reactionary discourse that promises solutions regarding immigration, taxes, unemployment, among others.
Meanwhile, the left social democratic parties have failed to produce ideas that appeal to voters and create new narratives that are easy for audiences to digest, and which are focused on alternatives, making political uptake and electoral reconstitution unable to success. Democracy itself is at stake because it does not seem to meet with actual parties’ interests, and it is not considered as a main element in the core equation of what neoliberalism considers “growth” (della Porta, D. 2013“Can Democracy Be Saved?”).
If a more sustainable economic model is to replace neoliberalism, a new message such as powerful as ‘freedom’ must emerge, and so the communication strategy to distribute it at the best timing possible. For this, it is important to consider the five lessons that neoliberalism taught us about communication and political strategies.

[Tim Penning · Rating 2 out of 5]

Makes the case that to affect change, we need to not fragment issues and need to communicate at the intersection of environment, politics and economy.