Policy Framing Through Policy Branding: International Maritime Organization, Climate Change, and Twitter/X

Abstract

Climate change, which nowadays is frequently framed as climate crisis in order to highlight the urgent need to take action to tackle it, has been studied extensively both in communication and political science disciplines. This contribution uses as an example the International Maritime Organization to highlight the utilization of its social media, and in particular its Twitter/X account, to frame that it supports climate action in the shipping sector and to brand itself as a green organization. The article offers an analytical framework which illustrates that policy branding is one of the most accurate tools to perform policy framing. It continues by showcasing that this is a procedure that governance institutions use to promote a deliberate message, even if this is not on track with what the institution is expected to do. The empirical data gathered, and processed through content analysis, paints a clear image of how this happens in the era of social media and leads to the conclusion that it is necessary to study policy framing and policy branding within the context they take place; otherwise, wrong conclusions might be drawn.