Conference article

My study is part of a research project titled “Media; Communication; and the Social Performance of Environmentalism: Comparing Ecological Collectives on Two Sides of the Baltic Sea” financed by the Baltic Sea Foundation. We are interested in comparing how different communication forums package ecological messages; create collectives; and enculture members into environmentally-conscious roles. My colleagues study face-to-face communication: the activist group Klimax; and the imagined communities of newspapers; using the lens of econationalism. Our research question is: How do these collectives’ discourses invite participants to a combined; on- and off-line performance of different social roles – ecologist; masculine; feminine; Swedish or German? My study concerns collectives created; and imagined; in computer-mediated communication; through a comparison of Swedish and German gardening blogs. Gardening blogs are topiccentered blogs; and the garden can be understood as online discursive field. My paper aims to address the following question: How do gardening bloggers invite participants; that is; readers to a combined performance of ecologist (or even nonecologist) roles in the garden? Using certain topics that are taken up in relation to ecology; I want to show how these topics create social relations. I also make some comparisons between German and Swedish blogs.

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