ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter explores how constructionism and closely associated perspectives have provided a productive framework for studying and understanding the roles of media and communication in relation to the environment and environmental issues. It traces some of the parallels in the emergence in the 1960s and 1970s of public/political interest in and concern about our relationship with the environment, and the emergence of the constructionist perspective (as defined by Herbert Blumer, Spector and Kitsuse, and others) in the sociology of social problems generally and in media and communication research more particularly. It proceeds to review the contribution of research on media and communication roles in the elaboration and contestation of the environment as a subject for public and political concern and action. It examines how research across a range of media and communication forms has provided an increasingly robust body of evidence on the centrality of communication to understanding the social and political ‘careers’ of environmental problems and issues, and it explores the contribution that environmental communication research can make in the politics of the environment.
