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Search engines and online marketplaces like Google and Amazon are shaping how we live, shop and travel. In doing so, they normalise carbon-intensive lifestyles – but the emissions that follows are not counted as theirs. Researchers within Mistra Environmental Communication argue that this must change.

It took only three weeks. Three weeks of putting one foot after the other, crossing rivers, following streams and puddles, to thanking their source in the sky. The journey made it possible to transform my view of water itself and the Dutch topography. The Netherlands being a small but densely populated country, its map was like a spider’s web in my head. All dots connected, rigid, with fixed roads and tracks in every remote corner of the land. I followed these roads and then I followed the water, in the meanwhile trying to understand and experience what the water meant for Dutch people.

Mistra Environmental Communication researcher Emily Montgomerie was part of the virtual conference committee for the Conference on Communication and Environment 2025 in Tasmania, arranged by the International Environmental Communication Association (IECA). In this blog post, she reflects on the things that allow people to connect through the screen and make people feel closer to each other, despite the long distance and different time zones.

“Spotlight on” is a feature that introduces new work done by Mistra Environmental Communication researchers, outlining the key issues and challenges explored, and their societal relevance to sustainability transitions. This month we put spotlight on the focus area “The constitution of knowledge and truth in environmental communication “ led by professor Anke Fischer. This focus area explores knowledge, emotions and values in the discussion of environmental issues, and how they affect governance practices.

“Spotlight on” is a feature that introduces new work done by Mistra Environmental Communication researchers, outlining the key issues and challenges explored, and their societal relevance to sustainability transitions. In this feature, we get to know more about the focus area “Co-creating transformations through environmental communication” led by researcher Sara Holmgren. This focus area centers around emerging, locally anchored land-use narratives as communicative acts that seek to reconnect people and nature to foster meaningful and responsible practices.