Visually branding the environment: climate change as a marketing opportunity

Abstract

While there has been extensive work on the textual realizations of climate change in the media, there has been little on the way such discourses are realized and promoted visually. This article addresses this using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to examine a new collection of images from the globally operating Getty Images intended for use in promotions, advertisements and editorials. Getty is promoting this collection in terms of Green Issues being a `marketing opportunity'. In this article we consider the results of these issues being recontextualized through this process, where they are shaped to fit the culture of branding. Analysis is of the images and the search terms where Getty lay out what can be said with the images.