Special Issue: Sustainability and communication

Guest Editors: Dejan Verčič, Krishnamurthy Sriramesh, Ana Tkalac Verčič

In an era of accelerating change and growing crises, public relations has evolved from a tool for reputation management to a strategic force capable of shaping the sustainability of organizations, communities and societies. At its core, the purpose of public relations is to synchronize organizations with their environments – whether natural, social, cultural, political or technological. As crises become more frequent and rapid change reshapes the global landscape, the role of PR in ensuring continuity and sustainability has never been more critical.

In the midst of all this disruption, public relations must adapt to help organizations and societies navigate unprecedented complexities that seem to grow in nature and scale with each passing decade. It is against this backdrop that we chose the theme for BledCom 2023 to help answer questions such as: What role can public relations play in making the world more sustainable? Does the field even have the power to determine its role in such an enterprise? Has public relations played a role in sustainable development and how can the profession contribute to the realization of the SDGs? Are there ways by which public relations scholarship can inform the profession to make it more effective in advancing sustainability? Can it influence the corporate sector’s approach to sustainability?

During the conference, scholars and practitioners addressed these questions during formal and informal sessions. A collection of essays based on those interactions is compiled in this special issue:

Editorial 30.2: Sustainability and public relations

Guest editorial: The role of public relations in advancing sustainability

Caring or selling? Communicating values or promoting products in PR education

From greenwashing to greenbleaching: green communication and mitigating moral outrage in the context of revisited situational crisis communication theory

Letters as organizational rhetoric on environmental social and governance (ESG): the case of Larry Fink and BlackRock from 2018 to 2023

Sustainability as guiding principle of communicative action the transformative and transformational potential of corporate sustainability communication as niche construction, a case from the energy sector

Communicating sustainability: the Iberian challenge for authorial fashion brands

How stakeholders respond to airline sustainability signaling – a social media analysis

Strategic silence in corporate communication concerning deadstock and overstock in the fashion industry

From tactical to strategic sustainability communication: a qualitative study on corporations in Türkiye

Empowering public relations for sustainability: examining the landscape in Türkiye

Attitudes toward sustainable development and employer brands: comparing generations X, Y and Z in two countries

Exploring business and SDG discourse on X: topics, users and engagement

Climate change as fake news. Positive attribute framing as a tactic against corporate reputation damage from the evaluations of sceptical, right-wing audiences

Corporate social innovation communication and institutionalisation: a cement multinational’s sustainability journey