Environmental sustainability and social (in)justice in Nike’s Space Hippie campaign video – a multimodal approach

This article argues for the usefulness of assessing organisational sustainability communication from a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis perspective, exemplified by analysis of a campaign video for a new sustainable shoe by the global sportswear company Nike. I explore how the meaning of ‘environmental sustainability’ is created by the video and the shoe itself and show how Nike also creates an image of the people who produce their shoes. My analysis reveals that while Nike projects an image of itself as a progressive company as regards environmental sustainability, the video simultaneously reproduces a very traditional image of the global division of labour and global interpersonal relations.