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Talking Green in the Public Sphere: Press Releases, Corporate Voices and the Environment

Talking Green in the Public Sphere: Press Releases, Corporate Voices and the Environment AbstractIn a climate of growing public concern and monitoring of business’s impact on the environment, corporations and industry groups have developed increasingly sophisticated strategies to manage their environmental reputation and to influence the outcome of environmental debates in the public sphere. In this article, we provide an exploratory overview of how the largest Swedish corporations selectively subsidise environmental news-making by supplying it with promotional materials disguised as journalistic copy. We analyse a year’s worth of public relations output from the largest 15 companies traded in the Stockholm exchange or owned by the Swedish state, in order to shed light on the environmental themes they cover, the techniques they adopt to maximise the likelihood of media coverage and the evidence they provide to support their claims. Our analysis shows that corporate voices make substantial use of environmental and ecological arguments in their strategic communication, but they provide little useful information about the company’s impact and do not usually foster forms of dialogic stakeholder engagement. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Nordicom Review de Gruyter

Talking Green in the Public Sphere: Press Releases, Corporate Voices and the Environment

Lischinsky, Alon; Sjölander, Annika Egan
Nordicom Review , Volume 35 (s1): 16 – Aug 1, 2014
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Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
© 2014 Alon Lischinsky et al., published by Sciendo
ISSN
2001-5119
eISSN
2001-5119
DOI
10.2478/nor-2014-0108
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractIn a climate of growing public concern and monitoring of business’s impact on the environment, corporations and industry groups have developed increasingly sophisticated strategies to manage their environmental reputation and to influence the outcome of environmental debates in the public sphere. In this article, we provide an exploratory overview of how the largest Swedish corporations selectively subsidise environmental news-making by supplying it with promotional materials disguised as journalistic copy. We analyse a year’s worth of public relations output from the largest 15 companies traded in the Stockholm exchange or owned by the Swedish state, in order to shed light on the environmental themes they cover, the techniques they adopt to maximise the likelihood of media coverage and the evidence they provide to support their claims. Our analysis shows that corporate voices make substantial use of environmental and ecological arguments in their strategic communication, but they provide little useful information about the company’s impact and do not usually foster forms of dialogic stakeholder engagement.

Journal

Nordicom Review – de Gruyter

Published: Aug 1, 2014

Keywords: corporate discourse; corporate social responsibility; environment; press releases; public relations; sustainability

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