Browsing by Subject "greenwashing"
Now showing items 1-2 of 2
-
(2023)This thesis combines quantitative and qualitative methods to analyse how metadiscourse can be used in corporate storytelling, more specifically company annual reports, and how this ties in with the concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and greenwashing. The study starts by introducing key concepts, terms, and frameworks, as well as previous studies done in similar fields or using similar methods. The research data for this study was the H&M Group’s 2021 annual sustainability report, which the corporation published on their website. The H&M Group was chosen because it is one of the biggest players in the field of fast fashion, and because recently it has attracted media attention for its sustainability actions, or lack thereof. Ten pages of the sustainability report were selected randomly, and the written language was analysed in detail with a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The same page selection process was then carried out again to get a selection of ten photographs from the report for closer analysis, to gain a more comprehensive and multimodal understanding of the sustainability report. This study bases on a metadiscourse framework by Hyland (2005), which was originally created for the analysis of academic discourse. The term metadiscourse refers to the ways in which writers or speakers interact with their readers or hearers through their use of language. For the visual metadiscourse analysis, this study uses as a basis a framework by De Groot et al. (2016), which is based on Hyland’s original framework, but focuses on studying images used in corporate annual reports. The analysis revealed that both linguistic and visual metadiscourse elements were key in creating a more compelling corporate story. The quantitative analysis found that both interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers were used in the written text but that interactional were more common. Through an analysis of the selected ten photographs, it was discovered that all De Groot et al.’s categories, apart from evidentials, were present in the annual report, implying that they were also a key part of creating a corporate story. This study also found that although the framework was originally created for the study of academic discourse, it can also help in bringing out interesting attributes in corporate reports.
-
(2023)Prior to the start of the war in Ukraine in early 2022, the Russian Federation was home to not only 20% of the world’s forests, but surprisingly also the highest number of certified forests in the world. The present study analyzed how forest certification, under the FSC and PEFC schemes, has been used in the Russian Federation by forest industry actors and government actors, with particular attention to the motivations for participation and perceived benefits of participation in the programs. This study is important because the need for a global sustainability transition is not limited to certain regime types, and the best methods to encourage transition within one context may not work within all other contexts. This study helps to fill the gap in the understanding of how and why forestry certification may be utilized in both the authoritarian context, and within the context of the Russian Federation. Based on the research, it was hypothesized that the Russian Federation participated in forest certification programs primarily for economic reasons, driven mainly by the demand of environmentally sensitive Western markets. It was hypothesized that the weak, rather than strong, sustainability is present in the Russian Federation and that the results would reflect this by being skewed strongly towards a single pillar: economic. Rather than carrying out the programs in truth, it was believed that forest certification was greenwashing–intended to create and maintain an image of the Russian Federation as an environmentally friendly nation. The study was conducted using the method of content analysis. A total of 232 documents from a selection of state and industry sources were coded inductively with codes sorted according to the three pillars of sustainability: economic, environmental, and social. In contrast to the hypothesis of the study, that economic codes would dominate–environmental codes were the most present, accounting for 41.8% of total occurrences. While unexpected, the findings of this study have helped to strengthen the assertions of previous scholars that forest certification is not all that it seems. The dominance of environmental codes in forest certification discourse contrasts with existing scholarly evidence regarding the environmental degradation present in Russia–generating more questions than this study is equipped to answer. Future study on the topic of forest certification and greenwashing in the Russian Federation is necessary to provide further clarity on the topic.
Now showing items 1-2 of 2