Communicating Climate Change: A Multimodal Comparative Study on Long and Short YouTube Videos
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58859/rael.v24i1.664Keywords:
multimodality, climate change dissemination, shorts, modal density, coherenceAbstract
YouTube shorts have become popular since being launched in 2021 and climate change-oriented channels have subsequently made use of this setup to propagate their message. 3 popular shorts videos concerning climate change alongside 3 long (regular) videos from the same science disseminators’ channel were selected to conduct a comparative study on how climate change is communicated in the two YouTube formats. The quantitative analysis focused on the videos’c modal density (Valeiras-Jurado & Bernad-Mechó, 2022), whereas modal coherence (Valeiras-Jurado, 2019) was analysed qualitatively. Findings revealed that the shorts examined presented a higher modal density and greater modal coherence. The short and long videos showcased high coherence in relation to their potentially different audiences. It has been shown that many YouTube videos about climate change promote viewpoints that oppose the scientific consensus (Allgaier, 2019). Giving insight and disseminating the climate change reality is effectively communicated could help reverse this trend.
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