ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Science and Environmental Communication
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1650345
Heuristic or analytical pathway? A multimodal analysis of communicative features in Southern Italian Renewable Energy Communities (RECs)
Provisionally accepted
- 1Universita degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
- 2Universita del Salento, Lecce, Italy
- 3Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy
- 4University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) represent a complex phenomenon, intersecting technical, social, and economic dimensions. Despite their potential, RECs remain a relatively unfamiliar and abstract topic to the public. This study examines communicative processes in public informative videos designed to inform, sensitize, and persuade citizens to participate in REC projects. We address a gap in the literature by focusing on the persuasive pathways (analytic vs. heuristic) employed in diverse communication contexts, analyzed through the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). Through an in-depth qualitative observational multimodal analysis of four videos (lasting approximately 20 minutes) representing different types of RECs (solidarity-based vs. non-solidarity-based, under-development vs. fully implemented) coming from Southern Italy, we propose an integrated method concerning speech and audiovisual features to describe and represent RECs. Several communicative strategies emerged: 1) the analytical strategy, privileging data, bureaucratic language, and authority (the case of Sant'Arsenio); 2) an emotional strategy, emphasizing regional identity and collective pride (the case of Roseto), and the 3) a balanced strategy, employing a blend of emotional and analytic cues (the Naple and San Severo cases). Findings demonstrate that message framing, the balance of analytic and heuristic cues, and audiovisual choices can differ in relation to the nature (solidarity-based or not) and the project type (under-development or implemented), thus potentially shaping engagement and public representation of the RECs. The importance of tailored, multifaceted communication strategies for REC engagement is finally discussed, with implications for public policy and environmental advocacy.
Keywords: Renewable Energy Community (REC), dual communication models, persuasive communicative strategies, Audio-visual analysis, Speech analysis
Received: 19 Jun 2025; Accepted: 18 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 D'Errico, Sportelli, De Simone, Procentese and Scardigno. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Rosa Scardigno, rosa.scardigno@gmail.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.