Traversing Roles Of Climate Crisis: A Visual Social Semiotic Study On Climate Change Advocacy On Instagram

Abstract

Climate crisis is one of the most serious threats to Earth and its inhabitants. There are attempts to engage individuals and groups in taking action to reduce climate crisis and images are an increasingly significant part of these attempts. Research regarding the use of images indicates that they are capable of affecting a viewer’s thoughts about climate crisis. This research study is an attempt to understand how climate activists use social media platforms to conduct advocacy. Using a visual social semiotic approach, the researcher has studied how still visuals uploaded on Instagram feed helps climate activists to reach out their respective audience. This research is qualitative in nature and the theoretical framework is drawn on Stuart Hall’s Representation Theory. Data interpretation has been carried out using Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s understanding of visual social semiotic analysis. The findings show that social media is used for primarily triggering consciousness and action among the users or viewers, and draw attention of the policymakers, government, and media. The photographs posted on the platforms of a global social movement in an Indian state that combat climate crisis, are more of infographics, instructional guides, illustrations, rather than actual photographs that document climate crisis. The representational meaning of a photograph posted by a climate activist is different from the constructional meaning of that photograph.