Editor’s Note

The cultural differences in regional sustainability communication.

Dear Readers,

The year 2022 will once again go down in the history books as one of the years of crisis. The war in Ukraine has led to a serious energy crisis in Europe. This, in turn, is critical in view of the achievement of the reduction of CO2 emissions against the backdrop of climate change. The 27th climate summit in Egypt in November and, at the end of the year, the biodiversity summit in Canada demonstrate the urgency with which global problems must be tackled.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted in 2017 and recognized and implemented by most countries in the world, should also contribute to this. But these goals are very abstract and don't resonate with people. All civil societies with their industries, political and economic systems would have to review and change their way of life. However, national and, above all, cultural differences must be taken into account. Citizens in the USA and Europe have to cope with different economic, ecological and social challenges than those in India.

Central to recognition, reflection, analysis and appropriate solutions is communication, especially that which penetrates directly into people's daily lives. Against this backdrop, colleagues mainly from communication and media studies were invited to submit articles to the Global Media Journal (Indian Edition) on the topic "Diversity, strategies, and practices of sustainability communication in accordance with the SDGs." The topic met with a great response; the editorial team was overwhelmed by the many abstracts submitted and the selection was difficult. In the end, six contributions were selected, highlighting very different facets of the topic. They focus on different SDGs and different media channels (tweets, film, digital platforms). What they all have in common is the emphasis on the importance of informing, educating and explaining to citizens, and the opportunities that lie in regional communication – whether in Germany, Karnataka, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu or Kolkata.

I would like to thank my colleague Prof. Dr. Padma Rani very much for taking up this topic and offering me the guest editorship for this issue. She and her editorial team have courageously embarked on an intercultural experiment, both on the level of the innovative topic and on the level of cooperation as editors of an international media journal. We will continue to pursue this and invite everyone to be part of it. The next opportunity is on 30 May, 2023 at the annual conference of the International Communication Association (ICA).

See the link below for the call for papers for the postconference (hybrid) in Toronto on the topic “Sustainability Communication in Local Are(n)as: Towards a Better Understanding of Culturally Diverse Strategies and Practices”
(https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/ICA23-PostconfCFPSustainabilityCommunicationinLocalArenas;
open until February 17, 2023). The conference is organized by Dr Franzisca Weder (School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland), Dr Jill Hopke (College of Communication, DePaul University, Chicago), Dr Lucy Richardson (Communications & Media Studies, Monash University, Melbourne), Dr Antal Wozniak (Department of Communication and Media, University of Liverpool) and Dr Beatrice Dernbach (Technische Hochschule Nuremberg).

See you there!

Kindly,
Beatrice