Promoting Critical Environmentalism through Satire and Humor

Many agree on the insufficiency of mere scientific and technological endeavors and insist that solutions to ecological crises must entail individual, cultural, political and communicative revisions to persuade people and policymakers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and policies.

This project aims to convey how satire and humor can be employed to address and mitigate environmental crises. This is significant not only due to the appeal and prevalence of humor and satire as socially involved modes, but also because of their capacity to engage imagination and emotions. This interdisciplinary project encompasses literary and cultural studies, psychology and communication studies to discover and devise more effective ways of advocating pro-environmental behavior at individual and collective levels. Employing environmental humanities, environmental and social psychology and quantitative and rhetorical research in communication studies to conceptualize and measure the impacts of satire and humor on environmental behavior through a wholistic approach, this research investigates individual attitudes, behavior and goals as immersed in culture in its broad rather than elitist definition as well as subjects in their social interactions.

While avoiding the pitfalls of naïve environmentalism, this project attempts to explore new ways to confront, address, and respond to key environmental challenges. It aspires to participate more broadly in urgent cultural and political discussions about how we can re-evaluate and intervene in the full diversity of environmental crises, engage a broad set of internal and external partners and stakeholders, and develop models for positive social and environmental transformations. This research clarifies how satire and humor can influence pro-environmental behavior through theoretical reflections, designs a valid instrument to measure this impact and discovers effective ways of communicating scientific findings to the public and policymakers to advocate pro-environmental behavior.