Corporate Discursive Governance of Water Stewardship: A Longitudinal Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Türkiye’s Initiative

Water scarcity and climate stress are increasingly framed as matters of individual consumption, even though structural drivers remain decisive. To examine how corporate communication participates in sustainability governance, this study asks how Finish Türkiye’s “Water of Tomorrow” initiative (2019–2025) defines the water problem, allocates responsibility, and builds legitimacy across time (RQ1–RQ2) using a longitudinal critical discourse analysis of multimodal materials (campaign videos, social media, web content, and reporting genres). We identify three phases: (i) household norm-setting through responsibilization scripts, (ii) scale-shifting legitimation via NGO/media alliances and ecosystem narratives, and (iii) metricization through quasi-institutional “water status” reporting and proprietary indices. While such strategies can raise salience and offer actionable guidance, they may also depoliticize allocation and equity questions by foregrounding consumer routines over infrastructural, agricultural, and industrial determinants. Practically, the paper proposes governance-relevant boundary conditions for corporate sustainability communication in water-stressed contexts: transparent sourcing of quantified claims, explicit role division with public and civil-society actors, alignment with basin-level and equity-sensitive governance, and avoidance of exaggerated individualization.