Interview with Nico Carpentier

On the Participatory and Innovative Dimensions of Environmental Communication

Nico: Well, I think I should start by saying that we have many good reasons to celebrate. One reason is, of course, that this is our last newsletter, where this piece will appear.

I think this is quite a majestic moment, for so many different reasons (smiles). Still, it is always hard to look back. At a time when a project is about to end, sometimes it is better to take some time to reflect, and consider what actually has been achieved. But, keeping in mind that everything is still fresh, I think there are a couple of things that, for me, were important.

One of the areas is, of course, what we have been doing in relationship to the mapping processes. At first sight, it always appears a bit technical, and only interesting for methodologists in the social sciences and humanities. But, I am particularly happy with that part of project, because it allowed us to find a very systematic way of mapping, and also visualize these very different ways that different groups in Sweden talked about the environment, and put numbers on that. We developed an entire machine to do this properly, which, I think, is innovative, and which took us a long time to fine-tune and tweak. That is one element that, I think, is quite an achievement.

I think the second achievement is the multitude of case studies that we could develop. Each of these case studies tell their own stories. They have their own analysis. They have their own context. And if you put them all together, they form a tapestry that offers a very rich analysis of how these different documentary films, television series, and social media platforms were trying to give meaning to the contemporary environmental crisis, but also, of what was behind these reflections -the ideological frameworks that these different media products were activating.

If you look at all these cases studies ranging from the documentary film on Kiruna to the fiction television series of Jordskott, each of these analyses is extremely detailed, and has a lot of context, because each of these media products are specific, and they have their own logics. We are particularly proud that we were able to put these diverse analyses together, that we managed to do a meta-analysis, an overarching analysis, of these very different projects that were all related to core ideologies such as anthropocentrism and ecocentrism. So, it was fascinating to see how all these different audio-visual media products had their own story to tell, which was very different than others, and at the same time, to see that they told a similar story, as they had something in common. There, we were able to extract this diversity, these always-contextualised meanings, but also what they shared, what they had in common. That is something you can only do in these large-scale projects, where you have time and resources to engage in a multiplicity of case studies, and where you can also move beyond the case study and tell a much bigger story.

And the third and last item that I think we, as a team, are all very happy with is the entire project that is connected to the Moulding Nature exhibition, with its artistic interventions, with its participatory arts projects, which are not only connected to the artist-in-residences that we had, but also connected to the website that our team developed, when it comes to visualising and explaining these ideological frameworks. The big thing there is that we managed to combine the very academic research with an artistic project, which is an arts exhibition, enriching both components. That is, I think, still something that academics do not do enough: to broaden their scope, to use more than the written text, and to engage in very different communicative (academic) practices.

So, I think these are the three areas, where we are particularly happy that we could do what we did, keeping in mind that all these different projects were actually very much connected, and that they were part of one bigger whole, that also had its time to develop, where we could afford to take our time and do things properly.

Thank you. Nico. I would like come to the participatory and artistic dimensions you have mentioned, in a while. But before that: one aim of the research carried out by the Mistra-EC@ICSJ within WP5 was to better understand the discursive struggles over the environment for a constructive engagement with new or marginalised perspectives. What do the findings suggest in terms of the potential for, and limits of, such understandings and engagements, more particularly, in the Swedish context that the research focused on?

Nico: I think that the discussion on the specificity of environmental communication is quite important here. If we look back at all these decades of attempts -because this goes back for a very long time in many different European countries- to convince populations to be more careful and respectful with the world they live in, we, of course, see that a variety of ideas, models and practices were launched, but in the end, we are still very far removed from reaching a situation, where we can analyse how we, as people, as humans, deal with nature, and be happy. We are very far away from that position and we are still doing more than considerable damage. That has forced us to think, also in this project, about what kind of knowledge we should produce to better understand this inability to change. And, I think, that is the main context, and that was the main question which was part of the Mistra project as a whole: after all these years and decades of insufficient results, also at the level of communication, how can we rethink this, and how can we maybe improve and create practices that work better?

I think that our contribution has been exactly what is in your question: The emphasis on discursive struggles, the emphasis on the very basic idea that some ways of thinking are extremely important. And again, anthropocentrism is a dominant ideology, which deserves our attention. If we want to break through this deadlock and become more efficient in communicating, also in the Swedish context, we need to take into consideration that, behind the communication, there are a series of ideological projects that we also need to involve in this (discussion about) communication, and where we actually need to create different ways of thinking. We need to generate and stimulate ways of thinking that are currently too marginal, too invisible, too much considered to be part of the fringes, with too little acceptance… So, that is where our idea of focusing on discourses, discourses as ideology, comes in. Because putting that idea about the centrality of discourse forward and keeping that idea on the agenda, and not just moving on saying, ‘well, this research has been done, there have been quite a number of scholars that made this point’, is important. We should continue to show how these ideologies work, how important they are, … That remains as one of our main objectives when it comes to the generation of knowledge.

But then, and that is the second part of my answer, we also need to take into consideration that there are contestations, that there is a permanent struggle over meaning, that there are attempts of thinking the planet differently, but that they are still fairly weak, and that they are still in need of more support and in need of more fundamental debates in the different public spheres of European societies.

So, I think what we started out with, and what we learned, and what we actually managed to explain much more in detail than when we started, is that ideology intensely matters when we deal with the environment, but also that there are counter-hegemonic discourses which are trying to make a change, which need much more support and which need to be activated much more, and which need to circulate much more, and which need to be used much more.

Connecting with your points above, in which ways, do you think, this research contributes to an advanced and inclusive communication of environmental and sustainability issues?

Nico: Well, I think, here, inclusion has two meanings. At a discursive level, there is a need to include these very different critical ideas in public debates to make them more visible, as I already mentioned. That is an absolutely vital process of inclusion where we, still, in so many parts of the social, and in particular when it comes to our economies, where we still get stuck in anthropocentric and instrumentalist processes, and where we find a lot of difficulties of thinking of a new balance, for instance, between economy and nature. So, there, at the discursive level, we need to include these other ways of thinking, these other models, in our ways of thinking about nature in general. That is one inclusion.

The other inclusion is, of course, related to which voices you allow to be included. Who gets to speak? And what we were also trying to do with our project was to generate more participatory dynamics, working with inclusion of these voices in the arts, in connection to civil society partners, … including them in academic research so that we could amplify these voices, so that we, through our academic practices, could also actively contribute to the inclusion of a diversity of critical voices that are propagating alternative ways of dealing with the environment.

Yes, thank you. And this actually connects us to the participatory dimensions you have mentioned. The work of Mistra-EC@ICSJ also involved collaborations with different societal partners, as well as certain participatory tools developed to facilitate these collaborations. Could you share with us your reflections on the work more specifically carried out in this scope?

Nico: What we were trying to do was to avoid situations, where it would be only academics responsible for knowledge production -and, I think, this is very much to the credit of Mistra, as a foundation, because they were stimulating us to avoid these exclusions. So, I honestly appreciated Mistra’s modus operandi, and we tried to translate that in a number of different mechanisms, based on a very fundamental reflection that we wanted to decentralise the power positions of academics in the production of academic knowledge, and we wanted to work in a much more dialogical perspective -of course, without us stopping being academics. We are what we are, even if we might be hybrids. We are what we are, but our projects worked in dialogue with a number of non-academics: partners from other realms or other fields of society, of the Swedish society in particular.

That was the central idea here: let’s not create an exclusive environment where researchers do their thing, but let's engage in dialogues. And we started this project with the creation of a number of these, what we started calling ‘participatory tools’, where we were trying to develop ways of giving voice, in a more structural way, to a diversity of societal partners. Working with them, but also talking with them... This was sometimes handled at very basic levels: If we did presentations, or if we had talks, we made sure that it was not just academics speaking, but that there were contributions of, for instance, civil society in an equal setting -in a setting that respected the diversity of positions. That is how we started with, for instance, developing the video letters idea, the unconferences, and this evolved to even more intense versions that are currently still running, where we started to engage non-academics in smaller projects. For instance, we have an participatory analysis project, where the analysts -the producers of academic knowledge- are not only academics, but where mixed teams (of academics and non-academics) are involved. This required considerable emphasis on training, because, of course, we are still dealing with academic research, with its procedures, its methodologies, its theories, … But we managed to actually create particular situations, where we did not just have a dialogue, but where the actual knowledge production itself, which is the heart of the academic endeavour, was no longer the exclusive territory of academics.

This idea of decentralisation was then also used to work on the arts exhibition, Moulding Nature. In the year before the actual exhibition took place, we started to organise four different participatory arts trajectories, each of which had their coordinator, each of which had levels of artistic involvement, but which also included non-artists, or maybe we should call them non-professional artists -people that are creative but did not necessarily identify as artists. Moreover, these projects were intersecting with the artists-in-residence that worked with us at different locations.

Again, these participatory arts projects were very much about decentring power relationships, this time in the arts: Moving away from the idea of arts only generated by (professional) artists, and creating situations where artists and non-artists could work together, producing these artworks -which are, of course, articulations of knowledge and aesthetics- that were then integrated into the Moulding Nature exhibition, which is still up and running at this point.

What are your opinions about the merits and potentials of these collaborations for environmental communication, in particular, for a better engagement of the society in more critical and inclusive communication of environmental issues?

Nico: I think that, on the one hand, we should not underestimate the importance of what academics do. There is a tendency of looking at academic texts as impenetrable, irrelevant, … We should not fall into that trap. Our contribution is partially academic, and we are proud of that. We should celebrate that part. I think we did good research. We allowed that research to circulate, also in academic circles. But at the same time, we wanted to make sure that we were not stuck in an academic realm only, and we started working with societal partners in these many different ways -learning from them, working with them, listening to them, … We were creating concentric circles that went out of the project, where these societal partners also became mediators that allowed the knowledge we were producing to circulate, and that could use that knowledge in their organisations.

There, Moulding Nature is again an important example, where we could move our work further outside of these circles, these areas of expertise -even if it was civil society or academia, moving further and actually reaching broader audiences, for instance, the visitors of an exhibition. We developed this onion model from the very start. Obviously, as polite and modest as we are (grins ironically), we saw ourselves in the centre of this model, as core producers in participatory dynamics with others. But then, we created more circles further and further away from us, that allowed the knowledge that we were producing to circulate as broadly as possible.

At the same time, we should be modest and careful. We should not assume that academic knowledge will find a huge audience. It is not how things work. Even in (the more traditional) communication studies theories, we were thinking about two-step flow models, or later, multiple-step flow models. The basic idea is still relevant: Knowledge travels in multiple steps, it travels through society in many different channels, but it does not necessarily reach everybody, because, for instance, it does not necessarily interest everybody. It is not necessarily found relevant for everybody. So, it is an illusion to think that we would reach the entire Swedish society. We cannot, we should know our limits. But, what we can do is feed knowledge into these communicative channels and see it circulate as much as possible.

Thank you, Nico, for these detailed reflections. In addition to the less traditional outputs for academic research, WP5 also produced certain learning outputs, such as Silencing/Unsilencing Nature educational package, and the latest output is an online platform that provides a map of competing ideological projects that you were talking about earlier. This platform contains textual and audio-visual content with contributions by different scholars from a variety of fields. What are the aims of this platform? In which ways do you think the map can be integrated in teaching and research?

Nico: Well, let’s take two steps back, not one step back, but two steps back. One is that we have been indeed experimenting with a wide variety of tools that allow for broader communication than the traditional channels that academics use. That is one point. Moulding Nature is one example, the Wolf Talks, which is embedded in the Silencing/Unsilencing Nature project is another example, and the online platform of environmental ideologies is yet another example.

The second step back that I need to take, connects your question to what I was saying before. In our case studies of audio-visual material, we were identifying a whole range of very different ideological projects that were clustered into large discursive assemblages, as we called them: groups of ideologies, on the one hand, clustered around anthropocentric approaches, and, on the other hand, clustered around ecocentric approaches. We identified, in total, 37 of these ideological projects belonging to one, or the other, of these two discursive assemblages. That is a large number of ‘isms’, of very complicated terms (smiles), that all require some explanation. Even at the very beginning, when we were working with this process of integration, creating literally a map of these ideologies, we realized that this was a complicated operation, and actually quite sophisticated. But we also realized that it would be challenging to communicate this analysis. I think that, in particular, the work of Gerardo Nicoletta, supported by our programming team (the programmers Orestis Tringides and George Nicolaou also deserve to be mentioned here) led to a structure -an online platform, that communicated the physical map I made and that could be used to better understand all these different ideologies, what they were. There, we chose the format of short video interviews with experts, each of them explaining a particular ideology. We chose that format to be as accessible as possible, so that we have a tool that, for instance, teachers at different levels (from secondary schools to universities) can use to explain the vastness of these ideologies and to make them understandable. If you listen to the videos, the interviews, they are actually quite fun! They are pleasant to listen to. They are very short, which always helps with online content, and they allow people to get a better grip on how these ideologies, with their very strange names, how all these ‘isms’ actually play a role in our lives and structure the way we think about the environment.

The disadvantage of online platforms is that they are online and that you have to find them, so you have to know about them in order to find them, because accidentally stumbling upon platforms is not something that happens very often. That was one of the reasons, not the only reason, but was one of the reasons why we integrated this platform in the Moulding Nature exhibition, where there is actually a computer that people can use to watch these video recordings on-site, in the exhibition itself, allowing people to get the ideological context of the exhibition, but also, of course, allowing them to be guided into using this database of ideologies on the environment.

Congratulations on all the work done. It is amazing!

Nico: Thank you.

My last question: How do you think this overall work can inspire further research and practice in environmental communication, both in terms of advancing the research and in terms of integrating these more innovative ways and tools for communicating academic knowledge?

Nico: Well, you could say that the work has only begun. When we created this ideological map, when we could show how rich these discursive assemblages were, how many were actually activated in these discursive struggles over the environment, in a way, we opened the door to a whole new research project. It was a bit regrettable in that sense that the project has to end, that there was no additional financing for starting to work in depth on each of these ideological projects, each of the 37. They deserve our attention. How they start interacting, how they strengthen each other, how these assemblages actually work is something that, I think, merits a lot more attention, not only theoretically, but also research-wise, at the empirical level, to see how, for instance, media are using them, how they circulate in the field of media, and how media professionals connect to these assemblages and translate them into strategies of supporting the environment -and this is what you (Derya) and Gerardo have been doing. So at the level of fundamental research, this has just begun, and I still have the feeling that this is more of a starting point, where we, I think, had a major contribution, but where we can do so much more.

That is one area, and the other is, of course, working with the more innovative, participatory, and arts-based research practices which we discussed during this interview. There is a lot of work to do there as well, also in evaluating how it worked. How participatory were our participatory practices? How artistic were our arts-based research practices? How did these power dynamics, also in relationship to art centres, for instance, Färgfabriken, worked? That actually requires a lot of reflection and evaluation from our side.

So, in this area, there is a lot to be done in terms of sharing our experiences, because at the level of participation, particularly, in the experiments with participatory analysis, where research is done by academics and non-academics, I believe that we have set the bar quite high, in producing a set of research practices that are more than just having nice conversations with people from civil society, or from government agencies, or from companies. What we did, was to come up with a model that is innovative, and can be used in so many other settings, also in other Mistra projects.

The same applies for arts-based research. Here, the entire idea of having this integration of academic and artistic work is extremely innovative. It is still not used sufficiently, but it opens up so many perspectives and opportunities for not only the academic world and the artistic world, but also for society in general.

Sounds like very promising areas for further research and practice. Anything you would like to add to these reflections, or any closing remarks?

Nico: Well, I think the closing remark is that we, all of us involved here, should emphasize that this was a collective and collaborative project, where we had an entire team working on it. Some of these people are currently still part of the team -in particular, Vaia Doudaki, Gerardo Nicoletta, also Elisabeth Wennerström, and you, the famous Derya Yüksek (chuckles). They have all played a very important role, together with -not to forget- our finance officer, Natálie Švarcová, who also performed miracles.

There are also a number of researchers that worked with us during the duration of the project, and here, I am particularly keeping in mind Björn Eriksson and Kirill Filimonov, as two important collaborators from the past. In addition to that, in particular, the team at Färgfabriken were very important in allowing us to do what we did, and the same applies to all the different research teams, from the Mistra Environmental Communication project and from other related projects. So, this was a huge operation, and I think, that is one of the things to emphasize. It is not easy to coordinate… Also, Anke Fischer and Eva Friman, as the main coordinators, played a very important role here, along with the other people of our famous Work Package 5; Sofie Joosse Malte Rödl, Jutta Haider -all played an important role. That is my first closing remark. It sounds a bit as the obligatory thank-you, but it is actually very important, and it is very genuine from my side.

The second closing remark is that we should make explicit something that we like to forget -that a substantial part of this project ran during the COVID pandemic, which has been extremely challenging for all the researchers, for all the partners, for all the people involved in this project. And much to my surprise: I think we have managed to keep this project on track in extremely difficult circumstances where nature, in the form of a deadly virus, was really not on our side… where there was this permanent reminder that nature can also be a very destructive force and can inflict terrible harm. But it also showed the resilience of us, human researchers, in dealing with these challenges, and I am particularly proud of the entire Mistra-EC@ICSJ team, but also the entire project team, that we have managed to overcome all these obstacles of having to do research in these extremely difficult, and sometimes very sad circumstances.

So, I think that we have a number of reasons to celebrate.

Thank you very much Nico, for this nice conversation.

Nico: Thank you.