Network focus
The Climate Change Communication and Narratives Network (CCCNN) seeks to complement existing climate change-related research activity at Deakin, critically focusing on the politics and practices of climate change narration and communication in a time of climate emergency.
This includes analysis of the assumptions, intentions, strategies and tools of climate change narration and communication – or broadly, storytelling – in public contexts and by stakeholders invested in the structural and imaginative changes required to mitigate climate change.
There are many assumptions about what storytelling is, how it’s done, and what works, in climate change communication. This is reflected in an increasing ubiquity of ‘stories’ in organisational responses to climate change, focused on public engagement.
As a network, we aim to explore nuanced, critically formed ways of thinking about storytelling and its capacities. We ask what is best practice in climate change communication that draws on this nuance and how is climate change communication being done, what are its limits, and who does it exclude? How can climate communication strategies innovate to engage with diverse demographics and multiple communities?
An outward-facing imperative
Our imperative is outward facing: scientists tell us we have less than ten years to avert the worst impacts of climate change. What we need now is real-world action and effective change.
We aim to contribute to climate change action and mitigation beyond the rhetorical and theoretical, while still interrogating our own knowledges, practices and histories within the academy, and contributing generatively to these.