Narratives of sustainability in public political discourse

Abstract

Currently, the concept of sustainable development occupies a prominent role in local, national and international debates about the planning, decision-making and policy practices that are supposed to guide current and future societies worldwide (Jacobsson, 2019). Its heavy use, even by institutions such as the European Union, shows that it is now a powerful tool for governance (Luke, 2005). However, these few applied practices of sustainable development reveal the weakness that the concept itself and its use carries (Linnér and Selin 2013, 2005). This research aims to map the frames of sustainable development as it is attributed in public political discourse both during an election period and during the governmental period. Specifically, the study focuses on the frequency and the way in which Greek parliamentary candidates through their personal Twitter accounts, as well as through their political group pages, semantically frame the sustainable development narrative and hence how it is put into public discourse. The rationale of the research is part of the scholarly debate on the social semiotic construction of a hegemonic narrative (Andrée, 2011) through social media. The classification will be based on the method of Entman's (1993) empirically grounded theory "Framing Theory", which analyses the semiological construction of certain aspects of a perceived reality through which a particular definition of the problem, causal interpretations, moral evaluations and/or recommendations for managing an issue are presented. The analysis reveals an interesting paradox, indicating contradictory understandings of the semantic and narrative performance of sustainable development.