Information Cultures, Data and Technology in Environmental Communication

(Mistra Environmental Communication II, WP1)

Information Cultures, Data and Technology in Environmental Communication

This project is part of the M-EC II program and centres the negotiation of data and information technologies in the emergence of environmental concerns among a range of actors and examines how they acquire meaning as well as materiality.

Start date: 2024-01-01

End date: 2027-12-31

Specifically, this means examining how data — as an imaginary and in concrete terms — is created, shared and (re)assembled across applications, services, people, organisations, and other actors to identify and understand potential opportunities and challenges for environmental meaning-making and governance.

Project aims

To provide insights into environmental meaning-making in situated practices that involve data-based technologies.
To provide critical analyses of the constantly changing sociotechnical conditions for environmental meaning-making in datafied information cultures and to help identify areas for potential regulatory or educational interventions.

Research questions

In what ways do information technologies and data shape environmental meaning making in different contexts and situations and how are they implicated in sustainability contestations and information disorders in society?
How are conflicting notions of evidence co-constituted by information technologies and data, and what types of challenges can this pose for environmental governance and communication?
In what ways is environmental meaning-making afforded by infrastructural conditions, and how can insights into this relationship inform policy, including regulatory and educational interventions?

The project consists of three tasks (cases) and one observatory

First task concerns how environmental apps produce and acquire meaning in people’s practices and everyday lives.
Second task focuses on Environmental social governance (ESG) and investigates the communication practices that arise when emerging data technologies are embedded into supply chains to increase trust and accountability in sustainability certification systems.
Third task examines data journeys in the context of advocacy coalitions, i.e., groups of actors promoting shared societal, or policy aims.
Observatory to monitor trends in data and information technologies of relevance to environmental communication, in partnership with the Swedish Library Association, the Wikimedia Foundation Sweden, and the Search Studies Research Group at Hamburg University of Applied Science (Germany).

The overarching ambition of Mistra Environmental Communication II is to provide a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of different forms of environmental communication and their roles in sustainability transformations and will allow us to effect change in environmental communication scholarship, policy, and practice. The programme’s vision is that transformative environmental communication by 2035 will underpin Sweden’s transition to a more sustainable society, acting as an internationally recognised model of critical and change-oriented environmental communication that is socially legitimised and inclusive. The research programme builds on the work carried out within Mistra Environmental Communication I between 2020–2023.

More about the research programme M-EC II at slu.se

Partners

Information Cultures, Data & Technology in Environmental Communication (M-EC WP1) is a collaboration between researchers from

Additional partners

Programme host

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)

Consortium partners

Uppsala University
Lund University
University of Borås
University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia
University of Texas at Austin, USA
And a wide range of other academic and wider societal partners, including public authorities and agencies, businesses, NGO’s, research institutes, and organisations within media, museums, and the arts.