Optimism and alienation – colour schemes and soundscapes as means for the social construction of risk in climate education videos

Abstract

While the field of climate change communication has become increasingly interested in visual representations, there has been a lack of research that attempts to capture the breadth and variety of semiotic resources being drawn upon in the contemporary media landscape. In this paper, social semiotic theory is drawn upon for investigating how colour and sound may contribute to the social construction of risk in a sample of four professionally produced Norwegian educational videos, all of which are aimed at explaining the reality and danger of anthropogenic climate change. The results indicate that the colour schemes and soundscapes of the videos contribute meaning potentials with affective resonances apt for the social construction of risk, and that the videos construe the risk differently. The authors suggest that in two of the sampled videos, the uses of colour and sound are apt for attenuating the risk perceived by the viewer, while in two other videos they are used in a manner apt for amplifying the perceived risk. Implications of these results are discussed in light of previous research on multimodal climate communication.