Industry professionals speak: it's all about messages – except when it isn’t

Abstract

Engaging and guiding the public to accept new, green fuels carries manifold challenges for communication. This article employs interview data to explore how communications professionals in the Australian energy sector speak about communicative aspects of their jobs. One key finding is that research participants initially describe work to be about making and sending telemediated messages. When prompted for further detail, however, professionals acknowledge the weakness of this approach and stress the need – and incommensurable value of – direct person-to-person engagement. Implications for both communication practice and communication theory are connected to this finding and are discussed via a reformed process model of communication. In so doing, potential opportunities for closing the gap between what communications professionals do and what they would prefer to do in the future are illuminated.