Ella Muncie
Thesis Title: Environmental communication and campaigning: The case of Greenpeace International's Alternative Futures campaign
This research focuses on the campaign strategies of one of the most prominent international environmental organisations: Greenpeace. It pays specific attention to the communication and online/offline media strategies used by Greenpeace International’s Alternative Futures campaign. This campaign ‘aims to build counter power to the monolithic Western development model through influencing allies and building counter narratives, as well as building internal capacity and a community of practice across the organisation’. Through the research access granted by Greenpeace International, this research examines the internal decision-making practices behind the formation and development of the Alternative Futures campaign. It analyses how the Alternative Futures campaign team identify, frame, and develop campaign messages and tactics. It traces how the campaign’s frames are subject to continual reframing, counter framing from other actors, and the mediatisation of these frames through ‘on the ground protests’, the traditional news media, and newer online media systems. It does so by conducting interviews, observations, and analysing campaign documents. Primarily it draws upon the analytical methods of a frame analysis, corpus linguistics, and multimodal analysis. Overall, this research provides insights into the everyday workings and communication strategies of an internationally coordinated campaign, whilst shedding light on innovative and new ways of environmental campaigning.
Biography
Ella Muncie is a 3rd year ESRC funded PhD student at the University of Leicester, in the School of Media, Communication and Sociology. Ella has a MSc in Environment, Culture and Society from the University of Edinburgh and a MSc in Social Science Research from the University of Leicester. Her current research focuses on Greenpeace International’s Alternative Futures campaign, particularly focusing on the campaign team’s internal decision-making practices and processes, as well as the campaign's online and offline communication and campaign strategy.
Publications
Muncie, E. (2021). ‘Investing in climate solutions? An exploration of the discursive power and materiality of fossil fuel divestment campaigns in Scotland’, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 11(4): 537-547.
Muncie, E. (2020). ‘‘Peaceful protesters’ and dangerous criminals’: the framing and reframing of anti-fracking activists in the UK’, Social Movement Studies, 19(4): 464-481.
Communication & Media
University of Leicester
2019 Cohort 1+3
Supervisory Team
Anders Hansen
Bernard Forchtner
Collaborator
Greenpeace International