Narratives of Nature: Storytelling, Sustainability, and the Moving Image

About this Research Topic

Background

Over the past two decades, scholarship in environmental communication has increasingly recognized the role of narrative as a critical vehicle for shaping public perceptions of ecological issues. Concurrently, media studies have demonstrated that film, television, and digital media fundamentally mediate our relationship with nature through both factual representation and symbolic, affective, and culturally embedded storytelling.

Despite these advances, notable gaps remain. Most of the discourse still frames the world as a binary of opposing groups debating climate change and responsibility. This divide frequently falls along geographic and economic lines: nations in the Global South navigating Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) alongside industrialization, and nations in the Global North reinforcing established standards and control. Critically examining how moving images serve as a primary information source within this contested landscape is a crucial next step for the field.

While climate change communication scholarship has examined news discourse, science communication, and social media activism, comparatively fewer studies have interrogated how audiovisual narrative forms themselves—particularly their aesthetics, genre conventions, and cultural contexts—construct meanings about sustainability, environmental justice, and ecological futures. Furthermore, existing scholarship often focuses on Anglophone or Western case studies, leaving significant gaps in comparative and transnational analyses that account for diverse cultural frameworks and indigenous knowledge systems.

The aim of this Research Topic is to address these gaps by examining the interplay between narrative strategies, sustainability, and the moving image across a global spectrum of media ecologies. The Research Topic invites contributions that bridge theoretical approaches—from ecocriticism, postcolonial theory, indigenous media studies, to transmedia studies—with empirical analyses of media production, circulation, and reception. Key questions include:

• How do narrative structures, visual aesthetics, and genre traditions influence environmental meaning-making?
• In what ways do cultural traditions, local knowledge, and political contexts shape environmental storytelling?
• How do moving images translate complex scientific concepts into emotionally resonant narratives that foster pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors?
• What role do global media flows and digital platforms play in disseminating, recontextualizing, or contesting dominant environmental narratives?

By integrating aesthetic, cultural, and communicative perspectives, this Research Topic will contribute to the interdisciplinary fields of environmental communication, media and cultural studies, and sustainability science. The overarching aim is to foster dialogue among scholars, content creators, activists, and policy advocates, critically examining the moving image as both a cultural artefact and a potential tool for ecological advocacy.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

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Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: environmental communication, ecological narratives, sustainability, climate change communication, environmental media, indigenous storytelling, transmedia studies, moving image, eco-aesthetics, media activism

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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