Spark sustainable conversations – Franzisca Weder

Today, we are learning from Franzisca Weder. As a communication and media scholar, Franzisca Weder knows that storytelling and the arts must sit alongside science, technology, business, and other disciplines to solve the challenges of sustainability and climate change. Throughout her 20-year career in tertiary education, she has focused on using various communication strategies and forms of creative disruption to bring about individual and organisational change. Her work turns the motto ‘all talk no action’ on its head, demonstrating instead the idea that ‘talking is action’. Communication, language, and stories are essential tools to help humans make sense of the world, question their reality, and develop new norms that create a socio-ecological transformation process. Univ. Prof. Dr. habil Franzisca Weder, is researching, writing, and teaching in the areas of Organizational Communication and Public Relations with a specific focus on Sustainability Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility. Franzisca Weder is the outgoing Chair and now Education Fellow of the International Environmental Communication Association (IECA). Let's get started... In this conversation with Franzisca, I learned: 0:00 Intro 02:20 a short overview of where she has been living and teaching. 04:15 Difference between Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Communication 07:35 Sustainability is a very much Western concept. 10:45 Cultural differences and corporate communication 13:55 No room for an alternative story to our market-driven capitalistic system. 15:20 Looking at sustainability from an intercultural perspective can create a new understanding of what sustainability means. 18:25 Her biggest passion is to make students curious and courageous, authorship for change, and spark conversations. 26:30 The easy way to spark a conversation. 30:40 Sustainability is such a peaceful and harmony-creating term. 32:40 Create touching points between the stories. There is a lot of energy in there. 36:55 Find the hidden champions in your organisations and let them be the communication pioneers in their networks. 38:25 Find the issues that are very relevant for the people within my organisation and tell different stories. 43:50 Stereotypes in PR and communication jobs. 46:15 Using the Inner Development Goals with students and in the classroom. 57:05 Don't call it the IDGs or the SDG's for sustainability, due to the overuse of the term. It is key to changing behavior. 58:25 The quality of the sustainability question, What do you care about? What you care about, then you care for it. 1:03:25 Learn from local philosophers. 1:11:30 Professional communication had a good boost and they learned a lot from all the communication and reactions during the pandemic. More about Franzisca Weder: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franzisca-weder-491b9257/ https://www.youtube.com/@franziscaweder8046  At the Vienna University of Business & Economics: Franzisca Weder — Vienna University of Economics and Business (wu.ac.at) Some creative / disruptive work with students: finaltrashtination (youtube.com) Podcast „Sounds like Sustainability”: SoundslikeSustainability - YouTube Books: (102 publications) and 28 projects Reimagining the sustainable consumer: Why social representations of sustainable consumption matter Career, Covid‐19, and Care: (Gendered) Impacts of the Pandemic on the Work of Communication Scholars CSR and Media Management CSR Communication and Cultures of Sustainability Cultivation of sustainability in a discourse of change: Perspectives on communication for sustainability as new “norm” and principle of action in socio-ecological transformation processes on Sustainability Communication: THE SUSTAINABILITY COMMUNICATION READER on integrated CSR Communication: INTEGRATED CSR COMMUNICATION