ENV1001 Seminar -- A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism with Professor Melissa Aronczyk
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About the Seminar
In the book A Strategic Nature, Melissa Aronczyk and Maria Espinoza examine public relations as a social and political force that shapes both our understanding of the environmental crises we now face and our responses to them. In this talk, Dr. Aronczyk will focus on the public relations consultants who drive the development of environmental PR. What are the motives, rationales and self-understandings that guide those who practice “green” PR? Where does environmental public relations come from, and how is it tied up with the history of environmental awareness? And how have these consultants created a set of conditions in which we have largely failed to recognize environmental destruction and climate catastrophe as public problems? More than spin or misinformation, PR affects how institutions and individuals conceptualise environmental problems — from conservation to coal mining to carbon credits.
About the Speaker
Melissa Aronczyk is Associate Professor of media and politics at Rutgers University. She is the co-author, with Maria Espinoza, of A Strategic Nature: PR and the Politics of American Environmentalism (Oxford UP 2022) and the author of Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity (Oxford UP 2013). Her research has been featured in The Nation, the BBC, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Grist and the podcast Drilled, among other venues. To access recent articles and stories, visit melissaaronczyk.com