Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises

“Given that humour is a popular – and often powerful – rhetorical tool, it is natural that it is worth investigating its use in environmental communication. This study is a thorough attempt of such [an] investigation [and] is a valuable contribution to the field of humour studies, as it gives a comprehensive overview of previous research on the relationship between humour and environmentalism, and also creates a theoretical model for further research on this topic. This book should not be viewed as an end in itself, but rather as a crucial and solid stepping stone on the path for future investigations of the potential impact of humour on pro-environmental behaviour.” Anastasiya Fiadotava, Jagiellonian University and Estonian Literary Museum; in an excerpt from a review in The European Journal of Humour Research 11 (4) “[This] book serves as a call to researchers and environmental communicators to work with a holistic approach to optimize humorous and satirical pro-environmental messages, followed by measuring the effects of such interventions. The influence of humor and satire on pro-environmental behavior has not been adequately studied to date, and the authors rightly emphasize this. They have taken a significant step in bringing together existing knowledge in a structured manner and providing practical guidelines for future research and applications in this field. So far there has been no comprehensive toolkit for systematically using satire and humor as interventions and study objects in the climate debate. The authors have succeeded in presenting such a toolkit.” Madelijn Strick, Utrecht University, The Netherlands; in an excerpt from a review in the journal Humor, https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2023-0134