The metaverse is considered by some to be the next big thing in the global economy. Despite technological progress and high expectations, scholars agree that a broader metaverse platform does not yet exist. Instead, it has been suggested that the metaverse exists mainly as an imaginary or a representation in various discursive contexts. However, studies that examine such representations are few, and the present study aims to – through the lens of social representation theory – critically explore how VR technology and the metaverse are discursively represented in Swedish news media. The analysis identifies three underlying themata: (a) The inevitability of technology, (b) The commodification of experience, and (c) The world of male pioneers. It is concluded that the news media?s representation of VR and the metaverse contributes greatly to maintaining the structural status quo. For traditional journalism to fulfill its democratic mission, a pervasive update of media logic is needed.

This study aims to contribute knowledge about how an environmental issue is discursively forged notwithstanding the prevalence of significant scientific uncertainty. This is done by studying the production of news about artificial turf as a microplastic pollutant in Sweden. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 journalists and editors, public officials, politicians, industry representatives and experts, all involved in the issue of artificial turf. The study shows how media logic, among other factors, informs the interpretations of the uncertainties surrounding artificial turf as an environmental problem and concludes that the power of media logic needs to be considered also in the construction of other scientifically charged issues.

Human GHG emissions are entering networked everyday relations. On social media, users potentially "reveal" their carbon footprints when they post pictures of a beef-based dinner or intercontinental travel. As the increasing urgency of climate change coincides with people's increasingly online-oriented lifestyles, we suggest that social-media research should devote attention to the ways in which users overlook, hide, limit, or casually articulate their high-carbon oriented lifestyles in digital space. This would contribute important knowledge about the role of social-media communication concerning climate change as an individual responsibility, and requires a concentration on how status updates become loaded with ideological meaning (high-carbon visibility discourse). The purpose is to present a framework for critical analyses of visual disclosure of carbon footprints in social media use. Media theory, semiotics, network theory and critical theory are combined to theorize how users' activities on social media become high-carbon oriented; their promotion of a business-as-usual stance; and how this operates ideologically through reification, legitimation and unification.

A well-functioning communication is a prerequisite for achieving sustainability. But how could this be accomplished in a world plagued by grave sustainability crises, where polarization proliferates and adds to a profound experience of fear and separation? To answer this critical question, an integrated ethical system that acknowledges all life as one is needed. The Ethics of Sustainable Communication elegantly interweaves theoretical and empirical knowledge from the social sciences with wisdom traditions from various parts of the world. This includes the world’s great religions, the knowledge of indigenous peoples, and the transcendent understanding of reality that artists of diverse kinds have always expressed. On this solid ground, the book argues for the necessity of a significant shift in human consciousness to achieve lasting sustainability. The book develops a communication ethics that aims at facilitating a genuine experience of the interconnectedness of all life through the expansion of trust. In a pioneering, intelligent, and eye-opening argument, including practical examples and advice, it demonstrates how the experience of separation in fact is a delusion. Our systems of thought and language have simply fettered us in a world of opposites – duality. The ethics helps us to overcome this illusory world, and when duality is dissolved, deep sustainability – caring for people, the Earth, and every lifeform – comes as an entirely effortless result.

This study investigates the phenomenon of information (in)sufficiency in the context of flood risks. Individuals’ perception of how much risk information they need is a major trigger and driver of information-seeking behavior, and therefore it is an important part of creating effective preventive risk-communication campaigns. To understand factors that contribute to individuals’ sense of information (in)sufficiency, the roles played by prior experiences of floods and general risk sensitivity were analyzed using survey data from residents in flood-risk zones. The findings highlight that every third respondent reported a state of information sufficiency. Residents with prior experience evaluate their information sufficiency level based on their perception of consequences of future floods. But it is general risk sensitivity that best explains need for more information.

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En fungerande kommunikation är grunden för att uppnå hållbarhet, såväl i våra nära relationer som professionellt och samhällsmässigt. Men hur skall detta ske i en tid då utmaningarna med ökad polarisering tar sig allt grövre uttryck?

Ulrika Olausson, professor i medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap, besvarar denna centrala fråga genom nio kommunikationsetiska principer som tillsammans syftar till en genuin upplevelse av allt livs sammanlänkning i Ett. I ett ögonöppnande och genomklokt resonemang, med många praktiska råd och exempel, visar hon hur upplevelsen av separation och polarisering i själva verket är en vanföreställning. Vårt tanke- och språksystem har helt enkelt fängslat oss i en värld av motsatser – dualism. De kommunikationsetiska principerna hjälper oss att överkomma världen av motsatser, och när dualismens tyranni upplösts blir hållbarhet – omsorgen om människorna, jorden och alla livsformer – ett naturligt resultat.

The nature conservation movement frequently relies on the lustre of celebrity personae to reach out with its message. As role models, celebrities exercise invisible power by representing certain norms and ideas while themselves being subordinate to social structures and discourses. Examining the case of Conservation International’s campaign, Nature Is Speaking, and guided by the methodological framework of multimodal critical discourse analysis, this study examines how celebrities, in alliance with the conservation movement, (re)produce certain ideas about nature and the human-nature relationship when discursively ‘celebrifying’ nature – turning nature into a ‘celebrity by association’ – by lending their celebrity properties to nature as represented in the campaign. The study identifies three ways of representing nature that the celebrification of nature produces in the campaign: nature as (1) eternal and magnificent, (2) caring and providing, and (3) mighty but delicate. Together these representations constitute a discourse that reproduces certain naturalised values and worldviews connected to the human-nature relationship. The paper concludes that the diversification of celebrity into new fields such as the natural is constitutive of the overall celebritisation of society, and it discusses the implications of the celebrification of nature in terms of reproduction of the human-nature dichotomy and obscuration of the structural aspects of environmental degradation.

In sub-Saharan Africa, Fojo Media Institute, Wits Journalism and four other organisations are jointly promoting independent journalism and protecting the space for civil society organisations and human rights defenders in the CHARM programme. Bringing together academics, media practitioners and researchers from four universities in South Africa and Sweden, the main objective of this policy brief is to introduce the concept of sustainable journalism, defining what the concept could entail in sub-Saharan Africa and investigating the implications for media development in this context. Stakeholder discussions on the subject matter were held with relevant media actors in four countries within sub-Saharan Africa. The findings, which provide clear policy recommendations, are shared in this report.  

Gaining knowledge about laypeople's representations of nature is crucial to meeting the sustainability challenges ahead. However, the ways laypeople discursively construct nature in digital settings have received scant attention. Guided by Stuart Hall's theory of encoding/decoding and multimodal critical discourse analysis, this study aims to contribute knowledge about the ways laypeople construct the human-nature relationship on social media. This is accomplished through a reception study of YouTube users' discussions about two of the films in the campaign "Nature Is Speaking." The results show that the human- nature dichotomy largely prevails notwithstanding the pluralist nature of YouTube users' interpretations, but also indicate the (embryonic) potential of social media to open up for a politics revolving around new visions of the socio-environmental future.

Global journalism appears to become increasingly important in the field of journalism studies, however, there is no agreement about how it should be applied in research. This entry presents four perspectives: the global-mapping perspective, which is concerned with mapping and analyzing how journalism works in different parts of the world; the media-technology perspective, which focuses on the potential of cross-border media technology to facilitate the creation of a global public sphere; the ethics perspective, which deals with how journalism should approach other cultures in order to reduce the distance between "us" and "them" and minimize stereotypical depictions of the Other; and the discourse perspective, which associates global journalism with reporting that sheds light on the multitude of cross-border interdependencies between people, processes, and events. The entry also discusses the positions of "globalists" and "skeptics" in the media globalization debate and the role of journalism education in the development of global journalism.