Research in Progress: Minority media and audience portrayals of organizations’ environmental actions

By Ioana A. Coman, Texas Tech University, Gabriel Dominguez Partida, Universidad Panamericana, and Nihar Sreepada, Missouri State University

Climate change, or perhaps more accurately, the climate crisis, is already negatively impacting all aspects of human life. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other crises, has been exacerbating these effects.

If, in 1987, we were defining sustainability development as having to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs – concerningly, that future is past due.

Sustainability, especially environmental sustainability, can no longer be ignored. Companies are called to action and must figure out how to best communicate their efforts and initiatives in these crisis/risk contexts. In many cases, they must figure out how to advocate and start or support activism efforts.

Environmental sustainability communication has many actors and many intertwining pieces. Therefore, stakeholder communication and engagement are vital for organizations. In this landscape, media plays a critical role.

By opening comment spaces to their online/social media news stories, media outlets create public spheres filled with active audiences. However, not all audiences have the same opportunities to access information. Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) are traditionally underrepresented in communication and engagement; too many racial and ethnic environmental health disparities still exist while these same groups remain underrepresented in sustainability fields.

Many studies examined sustainability communication and efforts in different contexts, from corporate social responsibility (CSR) to mediatized sustainability efforts. Still, none of our knowledge has been concerned about the gap between mainstream and minority media portray organizations’ environmental sustainability efforts and statements and how their audiences further interpret and judge those organizations and their efforts.

Consequently, our study will focus on this matter: how mainstream and minority media and audiences portray and evaluate organizations’ environmental sustainability (in)actions through a comprehensive and longitudinal analysis.

The results will help illuminate insights for public relations practice and theory. If we are urged to act to reverse the climate crisis, at the very least we need to facilitate access to information for all audiences for a better and more accurate decision-making process.

For more information about this study, email Coman at ioana.coman@ttu.edu or Dominguez Partida at gadoming@up.edu.mx or Sreepada at niharsreepada@missouristate.edu. Findings of this study will be shared next year. This study is a part of the Center’s 2022 Page/Johnson Legacy Scholar Grant for research proposals focusing on sustainability communication.