Framing Environmental Discourse in Pakistani YouTube Vlogs: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis

Abstract

Although social media have come into play in forming public perception of environmental issues, but little research exists on the construction of environmental narratives in Pakistani YouTube vlogs. The current study uses a corpus-assisted framing analysis to examine the environmental discourse of the Pakistani vloggers on YouTube. The research purposes are to find out the dominant environmental frames in vlogs and to analyze the environmental keywords that help to build the frames. The research design was the mixed methods which consisted of quantitative corpus analysis and qualitative framing analysis. The ten vlog transcripts from Pakistan regarding environmental issues were collected and analyzed in AntConc. The quantitative analysis revealed the presence of 10 main keywords relating to the environment. Trees (43, 24.2%) and water (62, 34.8%) were the most common words, which together accounted for 59% of environmental references in the corpus. Other common words that appeared repeatedly were air (18 occurrences, 10.1%) and pollution (8 occurrences, 4.5%) and climate change (7 occurrences, 3.9%). The four sets of dominant frames in the qualitative framing analysis were: Solution, Problem, Responsibility, and Awareness. The most common was the Solution Frame (40%) followed by the Problem Frame (30%), Responsibility Frame (20%) and Awareness Frame (10%). The results reveal that you can mainly find environmental narratives on Pakistani YouTube vloggers focused on practical solutions, community projects, and water conservation, tree plantation and environmental protection. Environmental issues are addressed as challenges but with a sense of responsibility and awareness, as well. The study, overall, suggests that YouTube vlogs in Pakistan are a vital medium for environmental communication as they connect local environmental issues with community participation and social action.