Environmentalist Multi-modal Communication: Semiotic Observations on Recent Campaigns

This paper proposes an analysis of on-line visual communication in recent environmentalist campaigns by Greenpeace. The basic question of this paper is: how does Greenpeace use visual images as a part of its on-line discourse, in connection with verbal text? The answer to this question can contribute to the understanding of a larger question: which is the role of visual images (moving and still) in environmentalist discourse? J. Chouliaraki (2010) identified a “post-humanitarian” tendency in communication aimed at collecting founds for humanitarian causes. This paper tries to discover if some of these tendencies are also present in environmentalist communication. This paper is based on a semiotic approach; it is a contribution to researches on NGOs’ communication, environmental communication and PR practices. The results are a typology of visual images, created by using different criteria, and the identification of some “post-environmentalists” aspects, in connection with some of the “post-humanitarian” tendency analyzed by Chouliaraki