Victoria Wibeck

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Linköping University

Studies of transformative change have been making headway in understanding the complexity of societal transformation processes. Yet, we lack understanding of how people’s lived experiences of transformations both shape and are shaped by meaning-making processes. In addressing this gap, we make two assumptions: Firstly, change processes comprise int...

Policy coherence is crucial in the 2030 Agenda's transformative ambitions and heralded as of paramount importance to ensure the successful implementation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and climate policy targets. Despite political efforts to achieve policy coherence, apparent trade‐offs and goal conflicts have emerged – even in a proclaime...

Inclusion of indigenous knowledge and voices is paramount if societal transformations relative to climate change are to be fully and appropriately considered. However, much of the research in this area still uses Western-based research methodologies rather than methodologies driven by the local Indigenous communities. Therefore, it is highly likely...

This paper explores the potentials and limitations of transdisciplinary research on sustainability issues characterized by extensive uncertainty and complexity. Transdisciplinary approaches that support the co-creation of knowledge in collaboration between science and society are advocated in research that aims to explore pathways for societal tran...

Transformation studies have been leaning towards the more practical aspects of change processes and have not yet dealt sufficiently with their personal and political dimensions. They are arguably constrained in doing so if they are either overly focussed on systems and how to control them or on individualistic values and behaviours. In this study w...

Previous research points to leadership as a key ingredient in mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. We adopt a polycentric perspective and use focus group interviews with Swedish actors within the business sector, politics, and government agencies, to analyse participants’ views on what it means to lead, preconditions of leadership, and d...

While increasing hopes are being attached to deliberate societal transformative change to achieve the targets of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement, questions remain about whether and whereby such profound systemic change can be governed. This paper analyses how transformative changes are intended to be encouraged and achieved, where and when....

While sense-making is a frequently used concept in everyday discourse and in several social science research areas, discussions about how the concept translates into methodology are currently scarce. This paper introduces a framework for analyzing how actors in different cultural contexts make sense of global concepts. By this we refer to expressio...

This article explores the methodological challenges and opportunities of climate change communication research in a digital landscape. It scrutinizes the potential and limitations of combining group‐based qualitative interview methods, such as focus groups, with new digital media tools such as serious games. The paper brings together three strands...

Calls for societal transformations in response to climate change and unsustainable trajectories are surging in scientific journals, political proposals and news media. The multifaceted usages of the concept of transformation creates challenges for scientific assessments, such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergo...

Background. Serious games are gaining increasing prominence in environmental communication research, but their potential to form an integrated part of participatory research approaches is still strikingly understudied. This is particularly the case for applications of interactive digital formats in research on environmental challenges of high compl...

Cambridge Core - Environmental Policy, Economics and Law - Sustainability Transformations - by Björn-Ola Linnér

This study explores how geopolitical aspects can affect actors' sense of agency to achieve the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its ambition to transform the world sustainably by studying the linkages between global change and the 2030 Agenda as described by Swedish change agents. Sweden has a self-declared ambition for leadership in...

Societal transformation is one of the most topical concepts in sustainability research and policy-making. Used in many ways, it indicates that nonlinear systematic changes are needed in order to fully address global environmental and human development challenges. This paper explores what sustainability transformations mean for lay focus group parti...

In recent years, effort has been put into developing various forms of climate visualization to create opportunities for people to explore and learn about local climate change risks and adaptation options. However, how target audiences make sense of such climate visualization has rarely been studied from a communication perspective. This paper analy...

This study explores sense-making about climate engineering among lay focus group participants in Japan, New Zealand, the USA and Sweden. In total, 23 qualitative focus group interviews of 136 participants were conducted. The analyses considered sense-making strategies and heuristics among the focus group participants and identified commonalities an...

Climate change can be difficult for laypeople to make sense of, because of its complexity, the uncertainties involved and its distant impacts. Research has identified the potentials of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for visualizing and communicating climate change to lay audiences and thus addressing these communication challenges...

This paper explores how Swedish laypeople make sense of emerging ideas of the large-scale deliberate technical manipulation of the global climate, known as geoengineering (GE). The paper is based on semi-structured focus group interviews with open-ended questions, allowing participants to express their spontaneous thoughts about GE. Although the fo...

The literature on climate engineering, or geoengineering, covers a wide range of potential methods for solar radiation management or carbon dioxide removal that vary in technical aspects, temporal and spatial scales, potential environmental impacts, and legal, ethical, and governance challenges. This paper presents a comprehensive review of social...

This paper sets out to develop key messages for the theory and practice of environmental education from a review of recent research literature on climate change communication (CCC) and education. It focuses on how learners of climate science understand messages on climate change, the communicative contexts for education on climate change, the barri...

The difficulties in communicating climate change science to the general public are often highlighted as one of the hurdles for support of enhanced climate action. The advances of interactive visualization using information and communication technology (ICT) are claimed to be a game-changer in our ability to communicate complex issues. However, new...

This paper explores social representations of climate change, investigating how climate change is discussed by Swedish laypeople interacting in focus group interviews. The analysis focuses on prototypical examples and metaphors, which were key devices for objectifying climate change representations. The paper analyzes how the interaction of focus g...

Climate change is a fundamental challenge for which agriculture is sensitive and vulnerable. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified relevant information as key to enabling appropriate climate adaptation and mitigation action. Information specifically directed to farmers can be found, for example, in specialized farming magazin...

In managing environmental problems, several countries have chosen the management by objectives (MBO) approach. This paper investigates how focus group participants from the Swedish environmental administration used metaphors to describe the mode of organization needed to attain environmental objectives. Such analysis can shed light on how an MBO sy...

Since the Swedish government and the EU intend to encourage farmers to expand energy crop production, knowledge of the factors motivating adoption decisions is vital to policy success. Earlier stud ...

Small-scale farmers on marginal land in the Loess Plateau of China are adapting their livelihood to new situations and changes such as varying climate, new land-use policies, changing employment opportunities and new market situations. To avoid generalising explanations with regard to land-use change, interactions between proximate causes and under...

This paper is an exploratory study analysing the communication models underlying Swedish civil servants' and scientists' views of how to communicate uncertainty related to progress towards public environmental quality objectives. Their lines of reasoning are illustrated by quotations from in-depth and focus group interviews. Two communication model...

Assessment of trends in the state of the environment constitutes one important aspect of efforts to achieve environmental sustainability. Assessments are often undertaken via indicators which measure progress towards environmental objectives and interim targets. This paper starts from the assumption that different types of environmental indicators...

This study presents the outline of a climate visualization programme directed to various target groups that was presented in a dome environment. The efforts of climate and visualization researchers to jointly develop presentations for immersive environments on the cause and effect of climate change as well as potential responses both in terms of na...

The focus group is a research methodology in which a small group of participants gathers to discuss a specified issue under the guidance of a moderator. The discussions are tape-recorded, transcribed and analysed. Notably, the interaction between focus group participants has seldom been evaluated, analysed or discussed in empirical research. We arg...

Management by objectives (MBO) is a technique for integrating ecological concerns into national political and administrative structures. Politicians determine environmental objectives and interim targets to be implemented and assessed by civil servants in national, regional, and local contexts. Well-developed organizational communication is a prere...

Dans cet article nous discutons des focus groups en tant que méthode d’exploration des représentations sociales. Notre étude porte sur les aliments, ou organismes, génétiquement modifiés (OGM). Les données de onze focus groups, organisés en Suède, ont étés soumises à une analyse de contenu thématique. Sont retenus les deux procédés rhétoriques util...

In face-to-face conversation, participants often give the floor, or the voice, to non present participants – virtual participants. These are made present in the conversation by actual speakers quoting them, voicing them or referring to their opinions. In this paper, we examine instances of such virtual talk. Data are drawn from focus group discussi...