Conceptualising Nonviolent Environmental Communication : Examining NVEC features in an Environmental Social Change Campaign

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Conceptualising Nonviolent

Environmental Communication

Examining NVEC features in an Environmental

Social Change Campaign

Anilla Till

Master thesis, 15 hp

Media and Communication Studies

Supervisor:

Paola Sartoretto

Sustainable Communication

Spring 2021

Examiner:

Renira Gambarato

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JÖNKÖPING UNIVERSITY

School of Education and Communication Box 1026, SE-551 11 Jönköping, Sweden +46 (0)36 101000

Master thesis, 15 credits

Course: Sustainable Communication Term: Spring 2021

ABSTRACT

Writer(s): Anilla Till

Title: Conceptualising Nonviolent Environmental Communication Subtitle:

Language:

Examining NVEC Features in an Environmental Social Change Campaign English

Pages: 51 Words: 14 718

The dominant approach of communicating climate change and environmental issues is through threats, shock and fear. However, several studies have examined the effects of threatening communication and found that the expected behaviour change only occurs in rare cases. As an alternative to threatening communication, I suggest using nonviolent communication for communicating sustainability threats. Conceptualising nonviolent environmental communication (NVEC) suggests that people are more likely to adopt and perform pro-environmental behaviour when messages about environmental issues are transferred via nonviolent communication. A meta-analysis is conducted to create the intersection between nonviolent forms of communication and environmental communication, which creates the theoretical framework of NVEC. Afterwards an analytical framework is created, which is used in the explorative content analysis. For this pilot experiment, the Eat Planet Based campaign of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has been chosen. The results show the characteristics of nonviolent environmental communication in theory and in practice, and highlight questions about the underlying power relations, contrasting threats and the denial of responsibility in the climate change discourse.

Keywords: environmental communication; nonviolent communication; threatening

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Illustrations

Figures

5.1 The proposed characteristics of nonviolent environmental communication 24

7.1 The characteristics of the chosen material 32

7.2 Screenshot of the video Planet-Based Diets - Good for us, good for nature! (0:07) 34 7.3 Screenshot of the video Planet-Based Diets - Good for us, good for nature! (0:42) 35 7.4 Screenshot of the video Planet-Based Diets - Good for us, good for nature! (1:41) 36 7.5 Screenshot of the video Planet-Based Diets - Good for us, good for nature! (0:34) 36

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Paola Sartoretto, assistant professor at the Department of Media and Communication at Jönköping University, who was my supervisor throughout this thesis work. Her suggestions on academic literature, research methods and scientific argumentation, as well as her prompt replies to my questions concerning the thesis helped me accomplish this work. I am also grateful for the thoughts of Ekaterina Kalinina, assistant professor at Jönköping University, who planted the seed of nonviolent environmental communication at the beginning of 2021. Additionally I would like to thank my classmates from the Sustainable Communication program for their continuous suggestions throughout the semester: Jule Wegen, Luisa Steinkogler and Michelle Dörner.

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1. Introduction: Nonviolent Environmental Communication as

a Persuasive Communication Technique

Science has recognised the undeniable links between human, animal, and environmental health: for healthy people we need a healthy planet. Despite tackling climate change and protecting the environment having key importance this century, encouraging people to become engaged in pro-environmental behaviour is challenging. The dominant approach of communicating climate change and environmental issues is through threats, shock and fear (Drews & Kaltenbacher, 2020). However, several studies have examined the effects of threatening communication and found that the expected behaviour change only occurs in rare cases (de Hoog & de Wit, 2007), and can also lead to the subjects underestimating or denying the problem (Peters et al., 2014). Moreover, the slow development of the visible consequences of sustainability threats can let the human brain perceive them as having their impact in the distant future, in a distant place (Robertson, 2018).

As an alternative to threatening communication, I suggest using nonviolent communication (NVC) for communicating sustainability threats. NVC focuses on communicating without blame, judgment or domination, and on contributing to the well-being of people. Conceptualising nonviolent

environmental communication (NVEC) suggests that people are more likely to adopt and perform

pro-environmental behaviour when messages about environmental issues are transferred via nonviolent communication.

A normative theory of NVEC can serve as a concept of communicating about the environment more efficiently, and to help people adopt pro-environmental behaviour. Academic research about nonviolent communication is currently limited – especially in the field of environmental communication. A public group on social media (NVC Research, 2015) focusing on structured academic nonviolent communication research refers to a list of only 66 journal articles, dissertations, theses, project reports, and independent studies in the topic (PuddleDancer Press, n.d). This specifically NVC-related collection mainly includes conflict resolution within families, couples, youth groups, inmates, mostly focusing on interpersonal relationships, healthcare, schools, religious institutions and prisons. Nonetheless, there is extensive research about nonviolent forms of communication in other related fields, such as compassionate, peaceful, dialogic and assertive communication. Along with risk and crisis communication, persuasive communication and environmental communication, these fields help guide this thesis in exploring how nonviolent communication can be used for communicating environmentalism.

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In the thesis an extensive literature review is conducted to map the above mentioned fields. This review aims to find out whether the concept of nonviolent environmental communication is partly or entirely present in the fields. After identifying the research gap, a meta-analysis of the reviewed literature is conducted, which results in a synthesis presenting the proposed characteristics of the forming nonviolent environmental communication theory. The synthesis is the base of the theoretical framework, which is further developed into an analytical framework. The analytical framework is then applied to analyse an environmental social change campaign from the World Wildlife Fund, that has a specific focus on the health of the planet and the health of humans. In the conclusion, the development process and the results are discussed, with further suggestions on how to develop nonviolent environmental communication theory.

2. Background

Communicating environmental issues efficiently is important to achieve and maintain planetary health – a term used to describe the overall health of the Earth including all living beings (Myers, S. S., 2017, p. 2865). Planetary health is mainly affected by humans, as they are currently the dominant force that shapes the biophysical conditions of Earth. The planet’s natural systems have been under transformation and destruction, and the global ecological footprint of humanity has been growing intensely and exponentially. Therefore, these conditions give the basis of the new geological epoch that humanity entered in the past decades: the Anthropocene (Myers, S. S., 2017, p. 2860). This transformation impacts the conditions of the natural ecosystems of Earth, which include six dimensions: “disruption of the global climate system; widespread pollution of air, water, and soils; rapid biodiversity loss; reconfiguration of biogeochemical cycles, including that of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus; pervasive changes in land use and land cover; and resource scarcity, including that of fresh water and arable land” (Myers, S. S., 2017, pp. 2860-2861).

These events do not only affect the various species living on Earth, but also human health and wellbeing. As conditions are changing rapidly, humanity faces hazardous situations on several levels. Natural hazards, such as storms, floods, fires, heatwaves and droughts occur more often and more intensely. These are worldwide followed by the appearance and development of nutritional deficiencies, mental health problems, non-communicable diseases and infectious diseases (Myers, S. S., 2017, p. 2861).

The dangers of emerging infectious diseases on a global level have been recently revealed by the coronavirus pandemic, starting in 2019 and still ongoing at the time of the writing of this thesis. The

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pandemic has not only been challenging for the infected: according to the World Health Organization, mourning, isolation, loss of income and fear have been triggering and intensifying mental health conditions. During the pandemic, people have been facing increased levels of alcohol and drug use, insomnia, and anxiety (WHO, 2020). Disease ecology highlights that human-caused change increases the risk of exposure to infectious diseases. These include changing environments caused by global warming, deforestation, biodiversity loss and interference with wildlife habitat. It seems that the more humans interfere with the wilderness, the more exposed they might become to declining health (Myers, S. S., 2017, p. 2863).

On the one hand, human and planetary health are dependent on people actively protecting ecosystems: which is present in the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations (UN), also called Agenda 2030. Goal 15 Life on land highlights the importance of protecting, restoring and promoting sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably managing forests, combating desertification, halting and reversing land degradation and halting biodiversity loss (United Nations, n.d). According to the 2020 report by the UN, before the coronavirus pandemic, the yearly targets to reach this goal were falling short: forest areas have continued to decline, over 31 thousand species have been threatened with extinction, 3.2 billion people have been affected by degrading land and intensifying climate change, and only a third of the UN countries have been on track to achieve national targets about integrating biodiversity into national planning. Moreover, coronavirus implications are mentioned by highlighting pangolins as the possible intermediary animal that could have transferred the coronavirus, and by that, emphasising wildlife trafficking as a disruptor of ecosystems and a contributing factor to the spread of infectious diseases (United Nations, n.d). On the other hand, the growing academic attention that biodiversity loss and environmental degradation received has led to new aspects of sustainability: one of these is sustainable diets. Food and nutrition security has been addressed by the UN body of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in its 2010 work of Sustainable Diets and Biodiversity. FAO defines sustainable diets as those “with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and healthy life for present and future generations, (…) are protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable; nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy; while optimizing natural and human resources” (FAO, 2010, p. 7). This report once again stressed the connection between the health of humans and the health of ecosystems.

A form of sustainable diets can be a plant-based diet. The authors of the 2010 FAO report highlighted that research had previously shown the benefits of plant-based diets on health and the environment, and they suggest conducting further research to understand why diets have not been considered as a

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main issue of the climate agenda. They also suggested translating the health and environmental benefits of the plant-based diet into information campaigns (FAO, 2010, p. 238). These two suggestions served not only as motivation but also as ideas of what further applications of nonviolent environmental communication could be possible based on this thesis.

Shifting to more sustainable diets and food systems, along with taking actions to protect the biodiversity of the planet might seem self-explanatory. However, along with performing other types of behaviour change, it is not simple. Threats to sustainability are often hard to acknowledge and understand: the human brain developed to focus on the present and often excludes long-term and slow changes. It is also difficult to motivate people to change their behaviour when it is highly unlikely that they would see an actual benefit that could influence the whole planet. Moreover, climate change often seems like an unavoidable phenomenon, no matter how individuals change or do not change their behaviour – which again might discourage people to include potential improvements in their lives benefiting the environment. Feeling alienated from climate change might result in becoming discouraged to establish pro-environmental practices. Such features make sustainability threats seem to be irrelevant for the presence of humanity, and therefore communicating its importance is rather challenging (Robertson, 2018, p. 6).

Besides that, differences in culture and education limit the chances of a dialogue about a collective effort of change. People tend to neglect those of different opinions or with a lack of knowledge, and this is true for environmentalism as well. However, climate change can only be solved by collective effort, which means that communicating efficiently about sustainability has to be a key component in facilitating the paradigm shift for planetary health.

According to Myers (2017), working towards achieving planetary health requires the following: identifying a new set of health threats; establishing priorities in research that explore the connections between the health of the planet and the health of humans; people working together from multidisciplinary backgrounds; preparing a generation of planetary health scientists and introducing solutions for better management of the planet’s natural systems (p. 2866). As a prospective planetary health scientist focusing on communication, this thesis is an attempt to enrich the multidisciplinary scientific literature on introducing solutions to grant planetary health. Namely, with the conceptualization of nonviolent environmental communication, of which the characteristics are observed and analysed based on the available literature and an environmental social change campaign. NVEC, therefore, aims to be the base of a new communication tool in persuasion to encourage pro-environmental behaviour.

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3. Aim and Research Questions

This thesis aims to conceptualise nonviolent environmental communication. The objectives of the thesis are: first to create an intersection between the fields of nonviolent communication and environmental communication by mapping existing literature. Second, to define the characteristics of the forming field of nonviolent environmental communication (NVEC) by examining the Eat Planet

Based environmental social change campaign of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The research

questions of this thesis are therefore the following:

RQ1: What defines nonviolent environmental communication as an intersection between nonviolent and environmental communication?

RQ2: How are the applied characteristics of nonviolent environmental communication manifested in communication initiatives?

To answer RQ1, an extensive literature review is conducted to map the fields that can be connected to the forming NVEC. To answer RQ2, an analysis of an environmental social change campaign is conducted. In the Summary and Conclusion chapter of this thesis, further research opportunities and the importance of working with NVEC are examined.

4. Previous Research

In this literature review, related fields to nonviolent environmental communication are presented. The extensive literature in crisis and risk communication, persuasive communication, environmental communication and nonviolent communication shape the emerging field of NVEC. According to this literature review, a conceptualization of NVEC has not yet been done by other researchers. The review is based on the scientific work available for a master student at Jönköping University – which means that similar conceptualizations might have been done in the past, or might be ongoing at the moment, that are currently not available for further examination. However, this research nonetheless aims to introduce new perspectives to engage people in pro-environmental behaviour change.

4.1 Communicating Risk and Crisis

Interest in efficient risk communication has been high both among scholars and practitioners, however, the specific characteristics of it are still not defined by an agreement. There are several approaches to define risk communication: what information is presented to participants, how risk

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this section, the focus is given to communicating risk and crisis in the areas of health, environment and climate change.

4.1.1 Communicating Risks of Health and Environment

The planned or unplanned communication of a wide array of health threats to the public, which includes the nature, impact and management of these threats, is called health risk communication (Lemal & Merrick, 2013, p. XV). The relevance of the risk is perceived differently by different publics and can be influenced by social, cultural and psychological aspects (p. XVI). There have been several research findings that have aimed to explore the connections between health risk communication and how the public receives and uses the given information.

Seeking efficient ways to overcome the barriers to risk communication, Das (2011) highlighted that mass-mediated campaigns that aim to change health behaviour often fail because of the defensive responses of the public. Das adds that these defensive responses root in health behaviour not being rational in nature and that it is necessary to decrease them by exploring positive emotions and self-affirmation (p. 9). Improving communication campaigns to overcome the rational or irrational, cognitive or affective, and conscious or unconscious barriers of the continuation of unhealthy habits can facilitate the desired behaviour change (p. 10).

Health and environmental risks are subjects of concern for people from all around the world (Rohrmann & Renn, 2000). However, as mentioned in the Introduction of this thesis, the negative impacts of such risks evolve over a longer period and are often difficult to be detected by humans (Peltu, 1988; Morgan et al, 2002 as cited in Renn, 2010). Renn argues that in the context of health and the environment, consumers want to have access to a variety of products that improve their lives while maintaining a low price. For this reason, risk information has to explicitly address the aspects of potential benefits and social needs (Renn, 2010, p. 81). For efficient risk communication concerning planetary health, it is important to recognise the connections between the health of the planet and the health of humans.

From the environmental perspective, as climate change has passed a critical point in the public consciousness, McKie and Galloway (2008) argue that scientists must focus on solutions, and that risk communicators prepare the public for the necessary behavioural change in their lifestyles. These changes are needed to make the preventive measures to avoid a global catastrophe – they argue that without an “emergent, globally-concerned, and an environmentally-aware risk communication fora (...) appropriate adaptive action is unlikely to win enough public support in time” (p. 395). In the

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following section, the most conventional way of communicating crises and risks in the area of health and climate change is described: threatening communication.

4.1.2 Threatening Communication in Health and Climate Communication

Although threatening communication and using fear appeals are the dominant approach to communicate about sustainability and climate change, their frequent usage is not justified by science. The ineffectiveness of threatening communication is supported both by theoretical prediction and empirical evidence. The two dominating models in this field are the extended parallel process model by Witte (1992) and the stage model of processing of fear-arousing communications by de Hoog et al. (2007). Both suggest that no behaviour change occurs when the subject does not find the threat severe enough, is not receptive to the threat, or there are no responses that can be effectively executed. Threatening interventions that are based on this form of communication not only occur to be ineffective but can sometimes be negative: by the subjects eventually underestimating or denying the problem (Peters et al., 2014, pp. 71-73).

In a study, Peters et al. (2014) interviewed 33 professionals in health promotion: intervention developers, policymakers, politicians, scientists, and advertising professionals to find out the main reasons for using threatening communication. On the one hand, these professionals wanted to attract attention and create self-reflection. They have assumed that the targeted population would respond rationally to increased risks. On the other hand, the supervisors and funders of the professionals often preferred threatening communication. Moreover, the professionals were often unaware of the complexity of threatening communication, and mostly relied on advertising agencies, external and intermediary organizations, schools and politicians when choosing this method to communicate health-related risks (p. 77).

Additionally, they found that two assumptions encourage the usage of threatening communication: firstly, that achieving awareness causes behaviour change; secondly, that emotionally defined risk leads to enhanced awareness. However, evidence shows that people rather direct their attention away from threatening information, especially when they have no solution to the threat (p. 77). Further investigating the effectiveness of threatening communication, Kessels et al. (2014) have studied early cognitive processes during message exposure, where participants were watching high-threat and low-threat health commercials about quitting smoking, practising safe sex and reducing alcohol consumption. The results once again indicated that those people who have the health threat as self-relevant show more attentional avoidance. A more recent study by Kok et al. (2018) added that even though risk perception theories indicate that people experiencing threat will

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want to encounter it, they only do so if the efficacy is high. In case of low efficacy, people react defensively.

O'Neill and Nicholson-Cole (2009) examined fearful representations of climate change by conducting two empirical studies including visual and iconic representations of climate change. They found that even though fear appeals might have more potential to attract one’s attention about climate change, it is ineffective to create personal engagement. Everyday emotions and concerns reflected by non-threatening images are found to be more engaging in the macro-environmental issue of climate change.

In contrast, Hartmann et al. (2014) found a significant increase in pro-environmental intentions when exposing participants of an experimental online survey to climate change-related environmental threat appeals. They argue that there has been a high correlation between cognitive threat level beliefs and emotional fear response. They added that perceived coping efficacy improved persuasion effects, meanwhile providing efficacy information lowered fear responses of the participants. Yet, based on scientific evidence, communicating sustainability through fear appeals and threats seems to be inefficient more often than not. The key to raising awareness and creating genuine public engagement of as many people as possible might lie in a more compassionate way of communicating about the environmental and ecological problems of the planet. For this reason, combining compassionate and persuasive communication is beneficial. Studies about persuasive communication techniques can give further insights on how to implement pro-social and pro-environmental behaviour change efficiently.

4.2 Persuasive Communication

Persuasion includes the process and the outcome of influencing attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviours of others, which comes from the attempt of changing the internal evaluation of a focal object (Vaughan-Johnston, 2020, p. 3). The basis of persuasive communication comes from the widely-known Elaboration Likelihood Model of Petty and Cacioppo, first developed in 1980. The authors created this model to understand the complicated relationships between messages and persuasion by examining the information in the message together with how that information is processed by the participant. They have differentiated the central and the peripheral route: the central involves a thoughtful and careful evaluation of the message, while the peripheral involves a direct attitude change without careful consideration (Massaro, 1988, pp. 155-156).

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Since the publishing of the Elaboration Likelihood Model, persuasive communication has been researched in various fields, such as politics, health, religion and marketing among others. In this section, the most related sub-fields of persuasive communication are further explored: the fields of consumer behaviour and environmental social change.

4.2.1 Persuasive Communication in Consumer Behaviour

Marketers have been exploring new ways of building bridges between the wants and needs of global customers and reaching a high level of satisfaction. New data sources and a growing need for using analytics in innovative ways serve as a stimulant for consumer behaviour researchers. Experimenting with sensory imagery (Wiedman et al, 2019), value expressive advertising (Powers & Choi, 2019) and web personalization experience (Lambillotte & Poncin, 2019) are a few of new persuasion communication tools in consumer behaviour.

Since defining sustainable development in 1987, the need to learn how to use persuasive communication about sustainable products and services has been growing as well. Kotler et al. (2005) stated that it is the responsibility of the given organization to use social marketing, and with that to preserve and improve the well-being of customers and society. For such organizations, it is important to communicate environmental aspects of products and services efficiently, so that a large number of consumers adopt pro-environmental behaviour change. In the European Union (EU), the Environmental Goods and Services Sector (EGSS) grew consistently faster than the rest of the EU economy between 2003 and 2013 (European Environment Agency, 2016). In a 2013 study, only a quarter of European respondents said that they often buy environmentally-friendly products (Flash Eurobarometer 367). Since then, a 2019 report by the International Trade Centre defined sustainability as a “mantra for retailers as well as consumers” (p. 8). The report added that 92% of retailers (in the EU) expected an increase in sales of sustainable products in the upcoming five years. From the consumer side, the report mentioned that the number of people willing to pay extra for sustainable goods and buying Fairtrade certified products has also increased (International Trade Centre, 2019, pp. 8-11).

A form of persuasive communication used in consumer behaviour that is tailored to pro-environmental behaviour change is green advertising. According to Kim et al. (2019) green advertising “influences individual mindsets toward advertising, and the intention of consumers to be friendly to the environment“ (as cited in Agarwal & Kumar, 2020, p. 3). With an emerging market of environmentally conscious products and services, green advertising has become an essential type of persuasive communication in consumer behaviour. Green advertisement is not only used to better

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communicate about eco-friendly products and services but also to drive long-lasting environmental social change.

4.2.2 Persuasive Communication in Environmental Social Change

Appeals of persuasive communication have been studied to explore what kind of messages could be the most efficient in encouraging environmental social change and pro-environmental behaviour. Schultz (2002) identified the inclusion model of environmental concern, according to which, there is a difference between egoistic and biospheric needs. This duality explains why certain messages that aim to encourage pro-environmental behaviour have different effects according to the receiver’s needs. Schultz argues that egoistic appeals can be more efficient when they target the common interest. On the contrary, receivers with a strong biospheric value orientation find communication that meets biospheric needs more efficient (p. 61-78).

Kesenheimer and Greitemeyer (202) have further explored this model. They tested a daily messaging intervention program using egoistic and ecological appeals and found that neither of them had a significant effect on pro-environmental behaviour compared to one another. However, the participants did show pro-environmental behaviour change as a result of participating in the study. Therefore, the authors concluded that in this case, being observed was the most effective intervention (p. 11).

Additionally, a resistance phenomenon in persuasion about climate change has become apparent. Resistance to persuasion is defined as “the extent to which an attitude change is capable of surviving an attack from contrary information” (Petty & Brinol, 2010, p. 240). The reactions to persuasive arguments on global climate change have been studied by Nai et al. (2016). They found out that political knowledge and interest – in another word: sophistication – strengthen resistance to persuasion. At the same time, anxiety has two effects. It directly decreases resistance, and it indirectly makes sophisticates less likely to resist persuasion when they encounter arguments that are inconsistent with their previous beliefs (p. 137). This is especially interesting considering the potential effects of climate anxiety on a societal level. To improve the persuasive effects of climate change communication, practitioners and researchers have been working on and with different tools of environmental communication.

4.3 Environmental Communication

The importance of environmental communication emerged with the growing attention dedicated to climate change. Notions of climate change and the greenhouse effect date back as early as the 1820s

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when French physicist Joseph Fourier described that "the temperature (of the Earth) can be augmented by the interposition of the atmosphere because the heat in the state of light finds less resistance in penetrating the air than in re-passing into the air when converted into non-luminous heat" (BBC, 2013, para. 4). However, climate change became a wider notion by the end of the 1980s and early 1990s: starting with 1988, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) formed to collate and assess evidence on climate change (BBC, 2013).

Since then, media coverage and communication about climate change have increased: Media Matters and MeCCO report subsequent and significant increases in media coverage of climate change in 2019 (Yale Climate Connections, 2020). A global journalism initiative called Covering Climate Now has been established in April 2019 by Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, in association with The

Guardian to provide more and better coverage of the “defining story of our time” (Covering Climate

Now, n.d., para. 1). The partners of the association include more than 400 news outlets and it aims to reach an audience of approximately 2 billion people to ensure a stronger climate coverage across the media (Covering Climate Now, n.d.). Such initiatives strengthen the importance of environmental communication, which include its social functions and communication tools.

4.3.1 Social Functions of Environmental Communication

Székely (2020) argues that the natural, economic and social changes caused by climate change root in the confusion of the “modern man” – under his rule, the operation of nature has changed. For this reason, for the climate change generation (the Millennial Generation and Generation Z) uncertainty is inherent in life (p. 11). Gábor (2004) states that the youth is surrounded by a great deal of uncertainty. He argues that all this is true even though, in a sense, the youth of today lives in a fundamentally safe world, thus their source of vulnerability and insecurity can be primarily existential (p. 5). Revolutions, civil wars, economic and financial crises in the early twenty-first century, along with the problems caused by climate change significantly influence the development of generational characteristics (Pais, 2013, p. 7). Additionally, as international awareness and media coverage has been speeding up since the end of the 1980s (starting with the foundation of IPCC), the climate change generation has potentially been surrounded by the notion of climate change since the moment they were born.

Therefore, the social functions of environmental communication include both reducing uncertainty and facilitating pro-environmental behaviour change. According to Klöckner (2015), there are two approaches to tackling environmental problems. The first is providing cleaner and more sustainable technological solutions, which does not require severe changes in individual behaviour. The second is

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influencing people to reduce damaging behaviour and encouraging them to shift to less damaging behaviour (p. 4). An additional function of environmental communication, therefore, is to create a balanced overlap between the two approaches.

4.3.2 Communication Tools of Environmental Communication

Environmental communication uses several communication tools that can be categorised according to the level (such as intrapersonal, interpersonal, group or mass), or based on the means used in mediated communication (such as newspaper, television, radio or digital). Besides those, some exciting new tools of environmental communication have been emerging in recent years.

Vries (2020) suggests that keeping the message simple, balancing the message and providing an action perspective are three communication design suggestions of public communication that can improve efficiency. Vries argues that cognitive biases, emotions and expectations have an impact on the power of environmental public communication, and they can be used as tools to promote sustainable behaviour (p. 244). Valenti (2019) explored the various effects of environmental documentaries and found that independent filmmakers have achieved increased distribution by making their work more available for viewers in recent years. Valenti adds that environmental documentaries attending festivals can be used as far-reaching, impactful tools for educators and advocates (pp. 191-193).

Video abstracts of scientific publications in environmental sciences and ecology can also be powerful tools according to Ferreira et al. (2021). They found that professional videos that are 2-3 minutes long were reached by a significantly higher number of viewers daily, additionally, the papers that belong to these videos also received a higher number of citations per day (p. 1). Scientific publications in this field therefore can reach a broader audience, which can contribute to pro-environmental behaviour change. Powerful offline tools of environmental communication have been studied as well. For instance, environment-themed board games can be highly efficient tools in some aspects according to Fjællingsdal & Klöckner (2020, p. 632), or games in environmental camps, such as relays and quiz games can contribute to behaviour change as well according to Supakata et al. (2016, p. 184). These interesting tools bring new ideas to the environmental communication discourse, and further researching them has key importance. Efficient tools, however, need to be combined with efficient techniques of communication: nonviolent environmental communication is a concept that, together with such tools, can improve pro-environmental behaviour.

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4.4 Nonviolent Communication Forms

Different ways of communicating in a nonviolent manner have been explored by practitioners and researchers. In the next section, the most widely-used communication forms in this field are explored: nonviolent/compassionate communication, peaceful communication, dialogic communication and assertive communication.

4.4.1 Nonviolent/Compassionate Communication in Person-Centred Care Services

Nonviolent communication, also called compassionate communication, has mostly been researched in the areas of education; care services; prisons; and families, including parenting and relationships. Even though these environments are different, the key ideas of Rosenberg (2015), writer of the most widely used book on the topic Nonviolent Communication: meeting one’s needs and creating quality connections are shared in the different research studies.

The approach of Rosenberg is a powerful asset to education, modelling constructive engagement in civic life, as argued by Agnew (2012) in her research about education. Following her study, the effects of teaching nonviolent communication skills as part of a university-level communication curriculum were studied by Baesler & Lauricella (2014). Their results indicated modest changes in peace-related beliefs and practices in everyday life. Cox and Dannahy (2005) studied the role of nonviolent communication in an online learning and e-mentoring environment. They found that NVC helped the participants to overcome communication issues characteristic of the online space, such as silence and a limited sensory environment.

The efficiency of nonviolent communication is also researched in healthcare environments, presenting promising results. Ekman and Krasner (2017) researched the role of NVC in substance abuse treatment, and have argued that nonviolent communication contributed to a significant increase in the empathy levels of the participants. They suggest that NVC training could be a beneficial addition to such treatment programs, helping the participants to work on problematic communication styles resulting from criminal behaviour, and also to help them create and maintain social support networks. Lee et al. (1998) created a set of tools for healthcare providers as well as patients to practice effective, compassionate and fulfilling communication. They argue that such communication skills are especially needed for those involved in serious chronic diseases, such as haemophilia and AIDS. Museux et al. (2016) explored the effects of NVC training on healthcare and social services sector care teams. Their results indicated improvements in role clarification within the group, individual competency in client-centred and family-centred collaboration, and group

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competency in developing a shared plan of action. Moreover, they also improved NVC skills in spontaneous communication, empathy and collective leadership.

Communication skills of inmates can improve based on research about using nonviolent communication training in prisons. Suarez et al. (2014) analysed the effects of nonviolent communication and mindfulness training of a project called the Freedom Project. The results showed that the project helped inmates to avoid setbacks of criminal behaviour, reduce levels of anger, and improve self-compassion and social skills.

Nonviolent communication is also used in family and relationship environments. Vazhappilly and Reyes (2017) studied the effects of the Emotion-Focused Couples’ Communication Program. The results showed an increased level of communication between the couples and an increased level of marital satisfaction, as well as enriched marriage quality. Nonviolent communication training is also used to improve communication between mothers and children with intellectual disability, which was studied by Rezaei et al. (2019). Their findings strengthened the previously hypothesised efficiency of such training programs, as mothers and children managed to reduce communication problems and improved mother-child interactions.

4.4.2 Peaceful Communication in International Relations

Researchers have been exploring the ways of managing international relations and conflicts peacefully and compassionately. In the most prominent studies, they highlighted the importance of nonviolent conflict and crisis communication related to them: there is a need for exploring new ways of communicating about peace because of the recent changes in communication in the past century, in a way that is tailor-made to different cultures, nations and religions. Moreover, the new global challenge of climate change also requires new ways of peaceful communication.

According to Chatterji et al. (2011), peace studies focus mostly on case studies using qualitative methods, and among others, it involves negotiations and arbitrations from the area of conflict management in industrial relations and is related to political science and international relations. It also includes the ethical aspect of nonviolence, culture and religion. Although peace science is not considered an individual interdisciplinary field, it has been moving forward due to conflicts within and between nations, growing environmental factors, globalization and terrorism.

Moreover, communicating about war and peace have been gradually changing in the past 150 years according to Messinger (2011). Mass media is used to execute strategies to control emotions and popular beliefs. The crowd impulses of billions of people generated by mass media need to be

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answered as quickly as possible, which is a challenging task for professionals involved in war and peace communication. Odum and Odum (2001) have also recognised that international conflict is rooted in increased competition for energy in the world. As there have been multiple societies and ecosystems that collapsed over the millennia, they aim to explore ways of how to create a more equal world with cooperation. They highlight possibilities and recommendations of having a future with fewer fossil fuels that are still peaceful and prosperous, which could be built on using efficient environmental communication.

Political conflicts, especially based on religion have been studied extensively. They highlight that ideas of peace, war and nonviolence need to be understood within their religious context for a better overview of the values, motivations, and ethics. Kuusisto (2009) studied renowned activists for peace such as Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Luthuli, and Martin Luther King Jr. He argued that even though leaders from Western powers are mostly studied in violent contexts, they use similar metaphors to their nonviolent activist counterparts, both with parties from similar and fundamentally different political systems. He adds that ingenuity and reflection are essential to establish a more peaceful world.

Omar and Duffey (2015) studied connections between religion, violence and peace. This work collected several studies focusing on religious peacemaking, as according to the authors, religious violence-related research is vastly outnumbered. They argue that conflicts seemingly originating from religious differences are, and have often been about economic and political control. These conflicts are oftentimes initiated by and for the benefit of the political and economic elite, therefore they are more connected to ethnic rather than religious identities. Funk & Said (2009) focused on conflict resolution with and within the Islamic world, with a specific emphasis on the Middle East. The authors argue that radical definitions of Islam are often given: being either a religion of peace or an international threat. However, professionals working with international relations need to include more diverse research about how Muslims think about conflict, peace and peacemaking, and they need to avoid reducing reasons of conflicts to only the religion itself.

Peace agreements in communal conflicts might be affected by government bias. Elfversson (2019) argues that the problem lies in the lack of trust that the government would be willing to guarantee the agreement that the conflict parties reach. Reaching a peace agreement, therefore, has a lower chance. Elfversson looked at four case studies from Kenya to support the arguments of the study, and she also found that that bias related to strategic interest is more durable and that the bias related to relationships is more likely to be influenced by political turnover, giving opportunities for peacemaking.

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Crisis communication of sustainability and development issues have been researched in various contexts. Nwanko and Shija (1990) investigated the underlying connections between the politico-economic relationship of the West and Africa, and the problematic management of development strategies of the latter, focusing on public communications and the political economy of the continent. Bischof (2010) studied crisis communication in coral reef environments. He explored attitudes, statements and consensus of the management issues connected to the conservation crisis of coral reefs. Jarl Borch and Andreassen (2021) have studied the complex operational environment impacts in the arctic region, focusing on crisis communication challenges. They highlight the need for emergency response mechanisms that are tailor-made. As the above-detailed examples show, exploring sustainability-related crisis communication has been present, but further research of this field can be beneficial when working with international crises, especially those connected to climate change.

4.4.3 Dialogic Communication

A dialogic concept of communication was first highlighted by Johannesen in 1971, who referred to the previous work of Buber, Marcel, Rogers and Meerloo, in the fields of theology, psychology and relational communication (Steward, 1978, p. 183; Kent & Taylor, 2002, p. 22). Johannesen (1990) defined the key characteristics of a dialogue: “genuine, accurate empathetic understanding, unconditional positive regard, presentness, the spirit of mutual equality, and a supportive psychological climate” (pp. 63–64).

The concept of dialogic communication is similar to the one of symmetrical communication, which is to "serve the public interest, develops mutual understanding between organizations and their publics, contributes to informed debate about issues in society, and facilitate dialogue and collaboration between the organization and their publics" (Grunig, 1997, p. 30). Symmetrical communication as an approach can also be used to facilitate dialogic communication in ongoing relationship building (Kent & Taylor, 2002, p. 32).

Several research projects have been conducted in the field of dialogic communication, focusing on environmentalism and climate change. A dialogic model of communication was used by Cone et al. (2013) to move behaviour toward decisive action between project staff and the public, focusing on coastal communities that are highly affected by climate change. The authors found that this model helped shape the development of learning and communication products in the dialogue about climate change (p. 365). A 2015 study by Arya and Parker explored the effects of dialogic action in climate change discussions among high school students. Their findings indicated that when questions

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from scientific experts are formulated in an unconstrained, open-ended way, students are more likely to acknowledge and consider the complex, and often conflicting positions about climate change issues. The authors suggested broadening science classroom discussions and to include unsolved issues like climate change (p. 131).

In 2020, a study investigating the effects of dialogic communication used for interactions between cattle producers and government agents was conducted by Telg et al. They found that avoiding the term “climate change” and instead focusing on observable local effects of it (such as drought or flooding) helps engage the cattle producers. Additionally, the participants preferred to discuss adaptation strategies, and communicate how to enhance profits and conserve lands. An interesting addition is that the participants preferred the term “climate variability” over “climate change”, because of the negative charge and low tangibility of the latter (pp. 40-41). The results of the studies connecting dialogic communication and climate change communication suggest that it is beneficial to explore the connections between these fields. Furthermore, implementing such practices could result in facilitating behaviour change.

4.4.4 Assertive Communication

In 2010, Pipas and Jaradat defined assertive communication based on the understandings of assertiveness of Lazarus (1973), Smith (1975), Lange and Jacubowski (1976), Rimm and Masters (1979) and Wolfe and Lowrence (1997). According to them, assertive communication is “the ability to speak and interact in a manner that considers and respects the rights and opinions of others while also standing up for your rights, needs and personal boundaries” (Pipas & Jaradat, 2010, p. 649). Using assertive communication practices is well-researched within healthcare, such as in health-related training programs (Omura et al., 2016), in nursing (Balzer-Riley, 2020), or reproductive health (Schmid et al., 2015). Assertive communication is given less attention in the context of environmental communication compared to communication in healthcare. A 2012 study by Kronrod et al. examined environmental messages from an assertive point of view. The authors approached assertiveness based on the observation of environmental communication often containing assertive commands. They argue that the persuasiveness of such messages depends on how relevant the problem is for the receiver. Additionally, the importance of the issue has to be carefully assessed or affected before selecting effective environmental campaigns (p. 95).

Kim et al. (2017) highlighted the role of cultural differences in environmental advertising campaigns featuring assertive messages. They found that Americans are less receptive to assertive recycling messages using imperative compared to them being more receptive to nonassertive messages. South

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Koreans at the same time do not show a reactive response. The authors added that according to their research, perceived threat to freedom mediates the effects of assertive environmental communication, and that perceived politeness can be an underlying second mediator (p. 550). Additionally, Baek et al. (2015) examined the effects of assertive communication in recycling. The authors found that when people invest a significant effort in following requests about recycling, assertive messages cause more favourable attitudes and behavioural intentions. However, for people who invest little effort to do so, nonassertive messages are more effective (p. 1).

This sample of literature already shows how applying assertive communication efficiently in environmentalism depends on several aspects, especially from the point of view of the receiver – how relevant the problem is for them, what culture they come from and how invested they are in solving the given environmental problem. Additionally, this considerable number of research projects that aim to explore nonviolent ways of communicating about environmental issues show that researchers are interested in exploring how to persuade receivers to take pro-environmental action.

5. Theoretical and Analytical Framework

To examine the features of nonviolent environmental communication, a theoretical framework is created. This framework is based on the concepts of the related types of communication detailed in the literature review, and creates an integration of nonviolent forms of communication and environmental communication. To develop the theoretical framework a meta-analysis is conducted, which results in the synthesis of the theoretical concepts.

First of all, to distinguish between threatening and nonthreatening/innocuous communication, the arguments are examined. In the meta-analysis, potential examples are given, while in the content analysis, real-life examples are analysed. From a persuasive communication point of view, arguments that have the potential to raise anxiety are identified, as well as egoistic and ecological appeals of the messages. Afterwards, the key environment-related characteristics of the messages are examined, with a specific focus on features present in nonviolent, peaceful, dialogic and assertive communication methods.

Special attention is given to the four components and three modes of nonviolent communication. It is necessary to mention that NVC has been primarily developed for interpersonal, mostly face-to-face communication – for this reason, the analyses indicate interesting results on which of these components and modes can be used in environmental communication, especially in mediated communication.

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According to Rosenberg (2015), the four components of NVC are observation, feelings, needs and requests. The components can be communicated in a nonviolent way through three modes: self-empathy, receiving empathically and expressing honestly. Identification can be more efficient when simultaneously identifying violent ways of communicating the components as well, which is called life-alienating communication. These include moralistic judgments, making comparisons and denial of responsibility (Rosenberg, 2015).

An additional common feature that is present in nonviolent, peaceful, dialogic and assertive communication is positive action language. This means that communicators are encouraged to express what they “are” requesting, rather than what they “are not”. The importance of communicating this way lies in the common response of humans to requests worded in the negative: “people are often confused to what is being requested, and negative requests are likely to provoke resistance” (Rosenberg, 2015, p. 67).

As a first step, the synthesis of theoretical concepts is used to identify the proposed characteristics of nonviolent environmental communication, which can be seen on Figure 5.1. This synthesis is the theoretical framework of nonviolent environmental communication. The development of this framework is the meta-analysis presented in the following section.

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5.1 Theoretical Framework: A Meta-analysis

The literature related to nonviolent environmental communication is neither complete nor exclusive to the above-detailed topics. It shows though that despite nonviolent environmental communication as an independent subfield not having been defined yet, it is worth exploring. The key ideas of it seemingly have been used by researchers and practitioners. This thesis attempts to construct and define the key characteristics of NVEC, which can be the basis of further researching the topic by testing the theory and by creating an applicable model of nonviolent environmental communication. In this section, the integration of nonviolent communication into environmental communication takes place through a meta-analysis, which examines real-life examples of it. The aim of this meta-analysis is to describe the proposed characteristics of nonviolent environmental communication in theory.

Connecting Sustainability and Nonviolent Communication

A scientific article by Boyer (2016) titled Achieving one-planet living through transitions in social

practice: a case study of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an example that explores the connections

between sustainability and nonviolent communication. The inhabitants (called the “Rabbits”) of this ecovillage have less than ten percent of the per capita resource consumption of the average American. Most of them train themselves in NVC to address concerns with others in the village. Boyer suggests that social skills such as NVC can help residents work productively through challenging public debates about common resources. He encourages governments to invest in such skills and to start modelling NVC, which could facilitate the first steps toward low-consumption systems at a local scale. He adds that such models can offer local planners and elected officials tools to handle conflicts about social equity, economic development, public safety and land use among others – ideas connected to sustainability and planetary health (2016).

Adapting pro-environmental behaviour does not only depend on communication. The environmental psychologist Robbert Gifford has identified 33 barriers in 7 categories to pro-environmental behaviour, that he has named the “dragons of inaction” (Gifford, 2011). These psychological barriers are difficult to overcome, which means that the outcome of the message depends on several challenging psychological factors. Because of the complexity of bridging these barriers, finding a way of efficient communication is also challenging.

The below discussed subtopics are the further detailed proposed characteristics of nonviolent environmental communication, which are presented in Figure 5.1 . The same characteristics are examined in the content analysis of the thesis.

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Threatening, Egoistic and Ecological Appeals

Nonviolent environmental communication can serve as a normative concept: a guide to facilitate pro-environmental behaviour in an ideal world. First of all, arguments that constitute threats and/or are likely to arouse the anxiety of the receiver need to be distinguished. Threats can address the receivers themselves, by presenting negative consequences of their behaviour, such as “if you use a plastic straw, you contribute to the death of a turtle in the ocean”. Arguments that use apocalyptic rhetoric, for example focusing on an inevitable climate catastrophe, can be considered to arouse anxiety.

Egoistic appeals in nonviolent environmental communication focus on the benefits of the individual. These benefits can be diverse – as argued in the literature, people want to access a wide variety of products with a low price, therefore convenience-related and economic benefits of adopting pro-environmental behaviour are important. However, consumer-related benefits are not exclusive: additional health-related and social benefits play a role as well. For example, people might prefer to use reusable period products for health-related, convenience-related and economic benefits. Even though these products – given they are reusable, therefore low-waste – are better for the environment as well, egoistic appeals could play a bigger role in whether someone adopts using them. Ecological appeals focus on the environmental benefits in decision-making, and the individual benefits have lower importance. For instance, a microfibre-catching washing bag has huge benefits for the environment by stopping microplastics from being released into nature. At the same time, the individual benefits of such a washing bag are almost irrelevant. Presumably combining egoistic and ecological appeals can serve as an efficient way of stimulating behaviour change.

Observation, Feelings, Needs and Requests

Observation, feelings, needs and requests – and their characteristics – have to be defined to explore nonviolent communication in environmentalism. Observation relies on using facts, in this case about environmental topics, that are communicated in a straight way free of judgement. These could be based on scientific data, such as “greenhouse gases warm the planet”. Communicating feelings in environmentalism could include for example “feeling uncertain about the future of the planet” or “feeling worried about water-shortage”. These are specific feelings of individuals or a group of people. Needs, on the other hand, belong to people but require the contribution of others. Communicating needs in environmentalism could be for instance “we need to stop polluting the ocean to have healthy fish in it”. Requests can serve to ask for these contributions, however, it is important to distinguish requests from demands – as demands often fail because of resistance as a

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natural reaction to them. A request in environmentalism could be, for example “consider choosing vegetarian or vegan options for your meals”.

Honest and Empathetic Communication

Honest and empathetic communication also belong to nonviolent communication and can be used in communicating environmentalism. Describing true – therefore, honest – statements about environmental issues help the receiver to understand the seriousness of a given issue, and highlight the importance of their contribution. Communicating these empathetically can be by understanding and acknowledging the circumstances of the individual based on culture, traditions, availability and affordability. For example, it cannot be expected to avoid food in plastic packaging in circumstances where no other food options are available.

Moralistic Judgments, Making Comparisons and Denial of Responsibility

In Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life Rosenberg argues that some specific forms of communication block compassion and contribute to behaving violently towards each other (2015, p. 15). As mentioned earlier, he has given the name “life-alienating communication” to these forms and has created three categories: moralistic judgments, making comparisons and denial of responsibility, which he has then complemented with additional life-alienating communication examples (p. 15). Moralistic judgments include indicating the wrongness of people who do not act according to one’s values. This often means labelling, blaming and criticising people based on their behaviour, instead of focusing on their wants and needs. However, one’s moral values are deeply personal. For example, someone participating in environmental activism can be viewed both as “motivating and inspiring” and “discontented and disobedient”, according to the value judgment of the observer. Rosenberg suggests that expressing wants and needs in this form is ineffective: it increases defensiveness and resistance. He also adds that even if people try to act according to the expected value system, it might not be a genuine act, but one out of fear, guilt or shame (p. 16).

Such actions might contribute to a feeling of resentment and decreasing self-esteem as well. The emotions of fear, guilt and shame become connected to the initiator of the behaviour, and will eventually decrease a compassionate response to both the needs and values of the person using this violent form of communication (pp. 16-17). In other words, the more one pushes another to behave according to their value judgments, the less genuine and compassionate the response will be.

This phenomenon can be observed for example in stereotypical vegan–non-vegan relationships. The moral values of vegans do not accept the killing and torturing of animals. The consumption of animal

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products, let that be dietary or other, do not fit in this moral system, and might be the source of moral judgment of the people not behaving accordingly. A vegan person labelling a non-vegan as a murderer, for instance, will most likely increase defensive arguments: “it is not me who kills the animal”; “everyone else is eating meat too”; and resisting arguments as well: “you already don’t eat meat so I will continue to eat more”. Furthermore, even if the non-vegan person decides to fit the vegan moral system out of guilt, the switch to the vegan lifestyle might contribute to increasing negative feelings toward vegan people, plant-based products, and potentially even the person initiating the lifestyle switch.

Formulating arguments in the vegan –non-vegan example without moralistic judgments could go another way, focusing on the wants and needs. Instead of arguing “murdering is bad. People who eat animals are murderers”, one can choose to say “I am concerned about the wellbeing of animals. I value the assurance of nutritional needs through other means”. In reality, though, the second example in a casual conversation about veganism might cause a surprising reaction. But to understand the difference between arguments with or without a moralistic judgment, in the beginning, such illustration can be useful.

Rosenberg further argues that labelling contributes to increased violence: and it is observable in movies. Oftentimes, the protagonist of a story is labelled “good”, while the antagonist is labelled as “bad”. The antagonist will most likely be eventually punished, beaten or killed. He also adds that cultures that avoid labelling people good or bad have significantly less violence (p. 17).

Making comparisons, according to Rosenberg, is a way of making oneself feeling miserable (p. 18). Comparing ourselves to famous people and their achievements might leave us with an extensive amount of negative feelings. In environmentalism, for example, making comparisons between local environmental activists and worldwide famous ones such as Greta Thunberg or Leonardo DiCaprio might undermine the achievements of the former. Such discontent then might lead to a lack of motivation for carrying on the pro-environmental activist behaviour.

The last life-alienating communication category, but potentially the most important one in environmental communication, is the denial of responsibility. Rosenberg notes that each person is responsible for their thoughts, feelings and actions (p. 19). Verbs that indicate the “need” to do something, such as “must” or “have to” could lead to an alienated connection to one’s responsibility in the act. This can be observed in phrases such as “this was the law” or “my company makes me do it”. In environmentalism, one might argue that they have no responsibility in contributing to plastic pollution, because at the local store it is compulsory to use a plastic bag when purchasing products.

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connected to it. For example, one can say that “I choose to purchase my groceries without plastic bags at the local market instead of going to the store because I feel overwhelmed by the plastic pollution in our oceans”. Once again, it is an illustrative example to facilitate the identification of language that implies conscious choice.

Besides the three main categories, small compassion-blocking examples are mentioned as well in the book of Nonviolent Communication. Demanding, which is a common form of communication in Western cultures, threatens the receiver of the message (Rosenberg, 2015, p. 20). However, as the effects of threatening communication have already shown, the efficiency of threatening communication is highly questionable. Avoiding the potential punishment of the threat when failing to meet the expectation will most likely not encourage people to act compassionately. The motivation to change one’s behaviour must come from another motivation: which is the genuine willingness to meet one’s wants and needs. In environmentalism as a social movement, the want is to grant planetary health, needed for the survival of humans. Understanding life-alienating communication forms in environmentalism, therefore, can lead us to find ways of using nonviolent language in environmentalism as well.

Positive Action Language

Lastly, positive action language in environmentalism focuses on the dos instead of the don’ts, focusing on what people can do for the environment, and not on what they need to avoid. This way, people can actively participate in actions that help them perform pro-environmental behaviour. Positive action language has been recognised as more efficient, as like this, people have a lower chance to confuse what is requested. Using this logic, “shop local”; “eat more vegetables” and “use reusable packaging” can be more efficient compared to “don’t buy products from far away”; “don’t eat so much meat” and “don’t use plastic packaging”. In the case of positive language, the receivers know exactly what they are expected to do, instead of them having to guess what they should do now that they are not supposed to do the opposite of it.

Nonviolent environmental communication as a normative theory needs to be developed using a detailed analysis of already existing communication practices of environmentalism. Afterwards, it needs to be tested on different communication forms, such as interpersonal communication; group communication; or mass communication, along with different groups of people, for example, based on age; gender; education; or culture.

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5.2 Analytical Framework

To test the theoretical framework, an analytical framework is created. The list of questions presented below is applied in the qualitative content analysis of the thesis.

1. Do the arguments constitute a threat and/or are likely to arouse the anxiety of the receiver? 2. Are there egoistic and/or ecological appeals used in the communicative act? If yes, what

characteristics do these have?

3. Are the characteristics of observation, feelings, needs and requests present in the communicative act? If yes, how can these be identified?

4. Does the mode of communication reflect empathetic and/or honest ways of communicating? If yes, how can these be identified?

5. Does the mode of communication reflect moralistic judgments, and/or making comparisons and/or denial of responsibility? If yes, how can these be identified?

6. Is positive action language used in the communicative act? If yes, how can it be identified? The above-raised questions are not exclusive, as this theory has just entered its first step in its development. In the following section, the method and material to explore the development process are presented.

6. Method and Material

As the intersection of nonviolent communication and environmental communication requires further conceptualization, creating the concepts, categories, properties, hypotheses and the potential theory of nonviolent environmental communication requires thorough scientific research, and in all likelihood, several years spent in academia focused on this topic. To start this process, one of the most widely used frameworks for analysing qualitative data has been chosen: grounded theory.

6.1 Method

As this thesis attempts to serve as the first step of creating nonviolent environmental communication theory by applying the method of grounded theory, firstly the discovery and application of grounded theory are presented. Grounded theory was developed by Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss, their work The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research was first published in 1967. This book is considered one of the most cited works in social sciences. Applications of grounded theory have been tailored to several specific fields, such as management, business and

Conceptualising Nonviolent Environmental Communication : Examining NVEC features in an Environmental Social Change Campaign