Environmental documentaries and the climate crisis: a multidimensional thematic analysis
Abstract
The current research investigates how modern environmental documentaries show diverse themes in presenting the climate crisis on a global level and how environmental stories have evolved. It also explores how the emergence of different narrators, celebrities, and visual evidence influenced the emotional tone and credibility of environmental communication. The current study used qualitative research methods and thematic analysis to explore key themes and patterns in five selected environmental documentaries. These documentaries were released from 2006 to 2019. The researcher assessed 45 main scenes from five environmental documentaries to analyze visual proof, the celebrities’ roles, the narrative structure, and dialogue delivery. Framing theory, Theory of Visual Rhetoric, and Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) were used as the theoretical foundation for this study. Current research discovered six significant themes in five selected movies, suggesting a shift in climate communication and its depiction in contemporary documentaries: themes include “ The Moral Imperative of Data, Visual Proof as Irrefutable Truth, Manufactured Skepticism and Systemic Deception, Global Interconnectedness of Ecological Risk, Personal Responsibility and Individual Agency, Proactive Solutionism and Technological Hope ”. The findings suggest a shift within the selected documentaries from predominantly warning-based narratives toward more solution-oriented climate communication. Contemporary films do not simply rely on fear factors or data bundles. Instead, recent documentaries on the climate crisis use an extended approach that underscores the hope factor and technological advancements. The latest Multidimensional Climate Narrative Model (MCNM) underlines a three-phase process, including establishing truth, pointing out hurdles, and giving the viewers a sense of power. This shift in narratives is more visible in the documentary 2040 , which shrinks climate exhaustion by replacing terrifying and alarming predictions with hopeful and doable lines of action to address climate catastrophes.