ABSTRACT
While corporate social responsibility, as well as sustainability as a moral principle guiding related strategies and activities, are predominantly in the focus of business and management studies, over the past decade, nonprofit organizations are getting more attention and are increasingly conceptualized as agents of social change. Their role in cracking existing norms and creating and driving public debates is of large interest from a media and communication perspective. In this chapter, social movements, participatory community projects, interventions and art are debated as an “intermediary” type of organization, with their potential to thematize, problematize and therefore “diffuse” and “normalize” new norms like sustainability in a different way. With a case study of an eco-art-intervention in Central Europe, supported by interviews (n = 15) with central stakeholders, we explore how much nonprofit communication’s unique character lies in problematization and creating resonance for a new narrative of the future like sustainability.
