About the Event
The Junck Colloquium with Melissa Aronczyk will occur on Wednesday, Oct. 9, in the Fredom Forum Conference Center (Carroll 305) from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Keynote
Melissa Aronczyk, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University
Mediating Publicity: Information Politics in the Climate Emergency
The ongoing belief that more and better information about global warming will spur publics to action has not adequately accounted for the work public relations does to establish legitimacy through appeals to the public, to information and to democracy.
This talk describes how media makers, environmental activists and communications professionals use PR to shape public perception and political decision-making around environmental issues.
Most critics dismiss PR as manipulative distortions of reality. But limiting the analysis to manipulation misses out on the specific ways PR embeds itself into our sense-making. This talk considers PR as a fundamentally cultural process influencing how we define public information and communication around environmental change.