Changing the mediation of climate change discourses: a multimodal (inter)action analysis of identity production and empowerment

Abstract The aim of this study is to explain how multimodal mediation contributes to ongoing identity production and transformation across interconnected layers of discourse when lay experience and expert knowledge enter in dialogue about climate change. By combining multimodal (inter)action analysis with empowerment analysis, this study investigates consequences of empowerment-oriented climate change communication upon identities of lay and scientist women when engaged in mobile phone conversations. The proposed methodological approach is used for qualitative analyses of videos produced by Science Moms , a group of nonpartisan climate scientists. The study clarifies how identity elements are produced and transformed when chains of lower-level actions and frozen actions build the multimodal higher-level action of a mobile phone conversation. Focusing on chains of lower-level actions constituted by social actors’ utterances, the study also discerns identity empowerment processes that are facilitated at individual, relational and collective levels through three layers of discourses. Identity elements influenced by video-produced mediational means are also explained. The study’s main contribution lies in systematically explaining how by integrating multimodal (inter)action analysis and empowerment analysis in the proposed methodology, it is possible to reveal how identities are interactionally produced and transformed, and how multimodal mediation contributes to empowering or constraining those identities.