ABSTRACT
The importance of environmental communication through scientific exchange, educational programs, and the media has been recognized internationally at least since the United Nations 1972 Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. The World Wide Web emerged in 1991 as an energetic, chaotic, quickly evolving, and largely anonymous environment. The unique combination of these qualities has attracted many of the Internet trailblazers who developed and propagated the first Web applications. This chapter summarizes the advances in networked information technology and their significance for environmental communication. It advances facilitate the transition from broadcast to interactive communication, promote collaboration and enable online communities to deal effectively with complexity, uncertainty, and risk. The chapter addresses the importance of networked information technology for environmental communication; the ECOresearch Network organizes an annual track on "Environmental Online Communication" at the Hawaii International Conferences on Systems Sciences. It presents how consultants designed a participatory process as a learning experience.
