12 pages., via online journal, We examined how information from multiple communication channels can inform social norms about local food purchasing. The concept of social exposure was used as a guide. Social exposure articulates how information in social, symbolic, and physical environments contributes to normative perceptions. Data was collected from a sample in Wisconsin. Results indicated that information from communication channels representing symbolic, social, and physical environments all contributed to normative perceptions. We also found that for individuals who frequent farmers’ markets, information from some communication channels was relatively less strongly associated with injunctive norms. It may be that when first-hand, experiential information is available to inform norms, individuals rely less on information available through other communication channels. Future work might further explore how farmers’ markets foster information sharing in communities, as such information may contribute to normative perceptions.
3 pages., via online journal., We often wonder why many a time our policies defy logic and our engineering designs lack a human element. There is no dearth of advances in scientific research and technologies. However, the large‐scale implementation of this knowledge and capacity on the field lags behind several decades in some regions. Unfortunately, the farmers not always benefit from these, least on the large‐scale. Well, the mystery may lie in the underlying communication processes that are supposed to be part of designing policies, institutions, engineering infrastructure, machines, products or any man‐made thing or rule. Or, sometimes it may be just due to a complete lack of any such processes during the design phase. Obviously, agricultural water management (AWM) for food production, particularly in many developing countries, is no exception to this phenomenon.
16 pages, via online journal article, This study examined the online content of interdisciplinary agricultural center webpages. Content modification dates, mission statements, and content were determined through a content analysis. Many of the websites did not mention a modification date for the content, while many websites had outdated content mostly older than six months. More than two-thirds of the websites provided PDFs that visitor could download to learn more about topics, by many of the websites lacked any media element that was being coded. Additionally, many websites did not use multiple forms of media. More than half of the websites were coded as lacking any social media content or plugins, but out of the websites that did include social media content, Facebook was the most prevalent. The commonalities between the center’s mission displayed on the website and the content theme were analyzed and chi-square tests provided the degree of association. A significant association existed and an alignment between communication strategies and missions of the centers was concluded, which is important when organizations communicate about agricultural science as indicated by previous literature. It is recommended that centers communicate via their websites in a timely manner and allow modification times to be seen to viewers to show their information is up-to-date. Website media content should also be diversified and communicators of these centers should explore the unique communication opportunities provided by social media. Future research should explore the target audience of interdisciplinary agricultural centers and should analyze the messages centers are using to communicate with those audiences.
15 pages., via online journal., Jeju, an island in Korea, became a place to site wind turbines with an unusually high level of public acceptance. Based on interviews, media analyses, and policy research, we found that the collective memory of socio-economic deprivation enabled community engagement to matter to residents, the provincial government, and environmental activists. It was within socio-historically contextualized processes of articulating the vision of a “good” society that an actual form of community engagement, however inadequate it might appear to some, became relevant to stakeholders in a particular locality. We emphasize that community engagement in renewable energy governance does not have one but multiple and situated ways of mattering depending on local contexts.
23 pages., Via online journal., This study draws on a culturally centered collaboration with a community of dalit women farmers in South India who were organized in a cooperative in their collective resistance against the corporatization of agriculture. Situated in the backdrop of the epidemic of farmer suicides in the region, this manuscript examines how those at the margins of global neoliberal transformations symbolically and materially make sense of and resist these transformations. The voices of the women farmers disrupt the underlying neoliberal assumptions that undergird the importation of cash crop agriculture into a subsistence and community-centered farming culture. They depict the ways in which Western cash crop agriculture disrupts community, food security, local health care systems, and the unique gender relations. Moreover, the communication advocacy work carried out by the women seeks to transform agricultural policy through material interventions as alternative practices of agriculture that challenge the hegemony of cash-based individualized agriculture.
12 pages., via online journal., Respecting ethical beliefs of consumers is an important precondition for food manufacturers in their attempt to improve their positioning in the European food market. Based on a cross-cultural survey of 2511 European participants, this research demonstrates how ethical beliefs affect consumer perceptions of “blue” (i.e. environmentally friendly) aquaculture products. The study further emphasises that the positive effect of ethical beliefs on purchase intention operates via an indirect route mediated by consumers’ trust in a product category. Consumer involvement has limited moderation effect on the above relationships. To expand its “blue” business, a key policy recommendation to aquaculture product manufacturers and policy makers is to urge stable and reliable standards of control in environmentally responsible aquaculture production so that consumers can rely on the information source and increase their trust in aquaculture products.
19 pages., via online journal., The following study looks at how traditional, organic, cooperative farmers
starting a new farming cooperative in the US Southwest communicate
about their farming as a set of (sustainable) cultural practices. The study
draws on environmental communication theory, the theory of the
coordinated management of meaning, and Vandana Shiva’s three-tiered
economic model to construct a communication-based framework
through which to view farmers’ stories about sustainability. This
framework is productive, showing how some Nuevo Mexicano farmers
(and others) orient toward farming, sustenance, and human-nature
relationships through community, family, heritage, and education.
Moreover, in addition to a conceptualization of sustainability as specific
practices for nurturing and enduring in environments, communities, and
organizations/institutions, sustainability can be understood as
embedded ecocultural and historical experience with cross-cultural
parallels in land-based communities. This study advances the ethical
duty of environmental communication to better understand the ways in
which environmental discourse and ecocultural and material realities are
imbricated, as well as the call for such discursive study to be grounded
in phenomenological experience of the natural world.
