Greenwashing Consumption: The Didactic Framing of ExxonMobil's Energy Solutions

Corporate advertising campaigns increasingly use environmental frames to promote their products and processes, many of which are neither sustainable nor environmentally friendly. This study examines ExxonMobil's recent efforts at green advertising, focusing specifically on their widely aired “Energy Solutions” television advertisements. We argue that ExxonMobil's use of a didactic, greenwashed frame stifles criticism and discourages examination of ideologies of consumption by exploiting the ethos of the scientist and highlighting technological solutions to problems that are deeply tied to a culture of consumerism. The definition of green energy is controlled by those with the power to generate persuasive public messages about the sources and production of energy. Counterframes, however, can be employed to turn a questioning eye upon the solutions advanced by ExxonMobil. We issue a call for green frames that help citizens and consumers critically examine the ecological integrity of all means of energy production, and that call attention to the ways in which the greenwashing of research and development initiatives can dissuade necessary action, including reduction of US energy consumption.

[1]  E. Goffman.  Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience , 1974 .

[2]  Steve Schwarze.  Environmental Melodrama , 2006 .

[3]  Thomas E. Nelson,et al.  Toward a Psychology of Framing Effects , 1997 .

[4]  Dorceta E. Taylor,et al.  The Rise of the Environmental Justice Paradigm , 2000 .

[5]  Gerald M. Kosicki,et al.  Framing as a Strategic Action in Public Deliberation , 2001 .

[6]  Qingjiang Yao.  China's Official Framing of Religion and Its Influence on Young Chinese Students: A Partial Testing of the Process Model of Framing in a Special Media Environment , 2007 .

[7]  Peter Seele.  Blue is the new Green? : colors of the earth in corporate PR and advertisement to communicate ethical commitment and responsibility , 2007 .

[8]  Rudy M. Baum.  The Story Of Stuff , 2009 .

[9]  A. Biel,et al.  Acceptance of climate change policy measures: role framing and value guidance , 2008 .

[10]  Robert M. Entman,et al.  Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm , 1993 .

[11]  James N. Druckman,et al.  Framing and Deliberation: How Citizens' Conversations Limit Elite Influence , 2003 .

[12]  H. Johnston,et al.  Social Movements and Culture , 1995 .

[13]  J. Corbett.  Communicating Nature: How We Create and Understand Environmental Messages , 2006 .

[14]  Ans Kolk,et al.  Winds of Change:: Corporate Strategy, Climate change and Oil Multinationals , 2001 .

[15]  B. Yarnal,et al.  The Impact of Local versus National Framing on Willingness to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions: A case study from central Pennsylvania , 2003 .

[16]  August E. Grant,et al.  Framing public life : perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world , 2001 .

[17]  R. Conaway,et al.  Framing and Counterframing the Issue of Corporate Social Responsibility , 2011 .

[18]  P. Haas.  When does power listen to truth? A constructivist approach to the policy process , 2004 .

[19]  S. Livesey.  Global Warming Wars: Rhetorical and Discourse Analytic Approaches to Exxonmobil's Corporate Public Discourse , 2002 .

[20]  Brian L. Ott,et al.  The Politics of Negotiating Public Tragedy: Media Framing of the Matthew Shepard Murder , 2002 .

[21]  S. Kraemer.  Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Gregory Bateson , 1993, British Journal of Psychiatry.

[22]  K. Burke,et al.  Language as symbolic action : essays on life, literature, and method , 1966 .

[23]  Joel J. Davis.  The Effects of Message Framing on Response to Environmental Communications , 1995 .

[24]  B. Hamm.  Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy , 2004 .

[25]  B. Siebenhüner.  Learning to manage global environmental risks: a comparative history of social responses to climate change, ozone depletion and acid rain: Review of: The Social Learning Group, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001 , 2002 .