Climate Change Agency Between Blaming and Framing

The climate crisis is not only an ecological and sociocultural challenge but also a communicative one. This book aims to trace how multiple actors from business, politics, journalism, science, and activism address this communicative challenge and, in doing so, build climate change agency. From the perspective of public-oriented organizational communication research, it systematically examines whether and how these actors can establish discursive dominance in public arenas amid a reciprocal blame game, and how they may use strategically framed claims-making to advance the institutionalization of socio-ecological transformation. The study provides, on the one hand, a productive theoretical foundation for organizational and communication research on complex issues such as the climate crisis by adopting the multi-actor perspective proposed here. On the other hand, it demonstrates the empirical value of this perspective through an exploratory claims-making analysis that illustrates how such an approach can be applied in practice.