On this page you can download the discussion paper that was submitted for publication in the Journal for Media Linguistics. The blogstract summarises the submission in a comprehensible manner. You can comment on the discussion paper and the blogstract below this post. Please use your real name for this purpose. For detailed comments on the discussion paper please refer to the line numbering of the PDF.
Blogstract of
YASunidos: Multimodal Fights for Democracy. An Analysis of the Sí al Yasuní Campaign
by Judith Visser
Located in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Yasuní National Park is widely regarded as one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth. It serves as a sanctuary not only for countless species of plants, insects, fish, mammals, and reptiles, but also for Indigenous peoples, among them the Waorani and the Tagaeri/Taromenane; the latter live in voluntary isolation within so-called zonas intangibles ‘untouchable zones’. Historically, Amazonian Indigenous nations have lived in harmony with their environment; however, their way of life – and the ecological integrity of their homeland – are increasingly threatened by extractive industries. Yasuní is home to nearly 20% of Ecuador’s oil reserves, placing it at the center of a profound conflict between economic development and environmental preservation. With petroleum exports forming a cornerstone of Ecuador’s economy, the country faces significant economic pressures. Approximately one-third of the population lives below the poverty line, with Indigenous communities disproportionately affected. Thus, the park’s vast natural wealth holds immense significance for a wide range of stakeholders. At the heart of this complex situation lies a fundamental tension: between economic interests, the protection of traditional lifeways, and the urgent need to safeguard a global biodiversity hotspot – especially in the context of accelerating climate change.
In 2007, then-President Rafael Correa launched the Yasuní-ITT Initiative, a pioneering proposal that offered to leave oil reserves beneath the Intangible Zone – specifically the Ishipingo-Tiputini-Tambococha (ITT) area – untouched in exchange for international financial support. The initiative aimed to balance ecological preservation with sustainable development. However, by 2013, due to insufficient international contributions, the program was abandoned. Oil extraction was subsequently approved within the park, despite widespread public opposition. Among the most vocal critics was the civil society coalition YASunidos. While a first attempt to hold a national referendum on oil extraction failed in 2013, the movement achieved a landmark victory in 2023: nearly 60% of voters answered YES to the question, ¿Está usted de acuerdo en que el Gobierno ecuatoriano mantenga el crudo del ITT, conocido como bloque 43, indefinidamente en el subsuelo? ‘Do you agree that the Ecuadorian government should leave the crude oil in the ITT – known as Block 43 – underground indefinitely?’. This outcome was likely influenced by a media campaign led by YASunidos, which mobilized both grassroots activism and digital platforms. The campaign’s success was rooted in a coherent, multi-channel communication strategy that combined street protests, social media outreach, and compelling visual and textual content.
A distinctive feature of the Sí al Yasuní ‘Yes to Yasuní’ movement is the striking consistency in its communicative patterns across various semiotic modes—particularly in images and written language. Across banners, posters, Instagram posts, and YouTube videos, recurring visual motifs and linguistic structures emerge, suggesting a deliberate and unified rhetorical approach. This coherence points to an underlying strategic design that purposefully leverages the affordances of each medium and the dynamic interplay between text and image.
This article conducts a systematic analysis of the communicative artifacts produced by the Sí al Yasuní campaign, situating it within the boarder sociocultural and ecological context of Ecuador – and specifically within the contested space of Yasuní National Park. Drawing on theories of multimodality and political discourse analysis, it examines how language and imagery are strategically deployed to advance the cause of biodiversity conservation. In doing so, the study highlights the power of visual and linguistic rhetoric in shaping public opinion and influencing environmental policy in the face of competing economic and ecological imperatives.
Review for the submission „YASunidos: Multimodal Fights for Democracy. An Analysis of the Sí al Yasuní Campaign“
reviewed by Verena Weiland
Recommendation: major revisions
Passung in die Zeitschrift:
Angemessenheit und Umsetzung der Methoden:
Plausibilität und Stringenz der Argumentation:
Review for the submission „YASunidos: Multimodal Fights for Democracy. An Analysis of the Sí al Yasuní Campaign“
reviewed by Daria Maria Mengert
Recommendation: major revisions
Judith Visser presents a compelling and well-structured multimodal analysis of the 2023 “Sí al Yasuní” environmental protection campaign by Ecuadorian social movement YASunidos. Her article yields important, though not very surprising, results concerning the campaign’s communication strategy, but greater sociological contextualization is needed to enhance the depth of interpretation.
The article opens with an engaging introduction that highlights the global recognition of the “Sí al Yasuní” campaign by prominent environmental figures such as Di Caprio, underlining the campaign’s relevance for analysis within a European context, and by extension, its inclusion in the JFML. The introduction, furthermore, stresses the importance of YASunidos as a grassroots movement shaping Ecuadorian environmental policy through social media communication and democratic protest in support of the Amazon. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how the movement is positioned within “the fight for (alternative) democracy(ies)”: though this concept appears in the title and introduction, it is neither further developed, theorized, nor applied in the article, and thus risks remaining a mere buzzword. Instead, the paper focuses on the campaign’s most prominent persuasive strategies, both in terms of design and language use on social media platforms. A further critical issue is the somewhat simplistic and dichotomous portrayal of sumak kawsay/buen vivir and Indigenous political organization, that can be observed throughout the article.
While the author introduces linguistic theory at a later stage, directly in connection with its application to the analysis, she first provides a social context section with background on Yasuní National Park, Rafael Correa’s respective policies, and the formation of YASunidos. In discussing the national park, the author highlights the tensions between decision-making processes of the local ethnic groups and majority voting in the broader democratic system. However, the formulation “political decisions […] through consensus” (lines 122-123) may convey a certain idealization. Overall, this section relies too heavily on Lu et al. (2017) and would benefit from engagement with a broader range of literature. In particular, the final paragraph (lines 135-153), that introduces the concept of neo-extractivism without using the explicit term, could be strengthened through reference to relevant sociological work, for example, by Alberto Acosta and Eduardo Gudynas, or German researchers such as Hans-Jürgen Burchardt, Kristina Dietz, and Sebastian Matthes.
Introducing neo-extractivism as a concept would also benefit Section 2.2 on Correa’s environmental policy, as it provides a sociological framework to better understand the mentioned “key contradiction […] that the government continued to rely on oil revenues to fund social programs and achieve the very goals of ‘good living’” (p. 13). Rather than relying on the Ecuadorian Constitution’s inevitably glorious depiction of sumak kawsay, the author could use this section to draw attention to the harsh debates that have evolved around sumak kawsay ever since the constitution-making process opened the stage for negotiating the concept in politics and in society. A particularly instructive read in this respect is “Die lateinamerikanischen Diskurse zu buen vivir” by Cubillo-Guevara, Vanhulst, Hidalgo-Capitán, and Beling (2018), which distinguishes the socialist/neo-extractivist, the indigenista, and the post-development strands in buen vivir discourse. Finally, consulting Alberto Acosta’s “Las tribulaciones de la Iniciativa Yasuní-ITT” (2010) would clarify that Correa and his party did not actually “introduce” the idea of an oil moratorium in the Amazon, but rather adopted it from ecological movements.
In Section 2.3, which addresses the origins of YASunidos, the author appropriately discusses the group’s first attempt to stop oil drilling in the Yasuní-ITT through a referendum immediately after Correa abandoned the initiative in 2013, as well as the legacy of these efforts, which ultimately culminated in the “Sí al Yasuní” campaign. Here, the insights from Cubillo-Guevara et al. (2018) become relevant to point out that, although YASunidos is a largely mestizo and urban-based movement, rather than a ‘purely’ Indigenous one (cf. lines 213-215), it nonetheless constitutes a central actor within Ecuador’s “sumak kawsay” social sphere. More precisely, YASunidos can be understood as a powerful campaigning platform for the post-development strand of buen vivir advocates, that forms coalitions with the indigenista strand to resist what they perceive as neo-extractivist distortions of sumak kawsay.
In section 3, the author provides valuable insights into press freedom in Ecuador, before outlining her open, inductive approach to researching “Sí al Yasuní”-related social media content. In lines 301-328, she offers convincing justification for employing this exploratory methodology. The four key aspects identified for closer examination – corporate design, campaign name, dichotomous representations, and diversity – provide a clear structure for the analysis. Meanwhile, the evidence presented supports the assessment that the author has done a good job identifying these as the most salient features of the online campaign.
The analyses of the corporate design and the campaign slogan are persuasive and supported by relevant literature. Only a few minor aspects appear to be missing in the discussion, for example, the observation that incorporating the striking visuals of the Amazon into the campaign design is an intuitive and perhaps obvious choice, or that the slogan’s appeal is enhanced in part due to its rhyme. Once again, Cubillo-Guevara et al. (2018) or related sources could further enrich the discussion concerning YASunidos’ “identity management” (lines 388-394). A rare instance of terminological imprecision occurs in lines 467–468: the “object of affirmation” clearly cannot “be modified” indiscriminately but rather in a pars pro toto relationship with Yasuní (“agua”, “bosques”) or a toto pro parsrelationship (“la vida”). The examples of complementary negative slogans (“¡No al fraude a la democracia!”) not only mirror the campaign slogan, but, perhaps more importantly, reflect a common form characteristic of Latin American social protest slogans in general.
In contrast, the analysis of diversity representation remains slightly underdeveloped. In particular, the analysis would benefit from a brief comparison with other grassroots political campaigns to consider which types of imagery are avoided in the “Sí al Yasuní” campaign. For example, social protests in 2022 led by the Indigenous National Confederation (CONAIE), were widely depicted in the media through images of groups of protesters, some with covered faces and makeshift shields, and streets filled with smoke from pyrotechnics. By contrast, the core imagery of the “Sí al Yasuní” campaign appears to consciously refrain from employing overtly socialist or revolutionary visual language, instead emphasizing a colorful and harmonious portrayal of diversity, as identified by the author. This is a central point, given that Correa and others have long sought to discredit the ecological movement as too radical, while the campaign itself sought to persuade a broad majority of Ecuadorians to vote “sí”.
The depiction of ethnic diversity in the videos emphasizes that YASunidos are not engaging in activism merely out of solidarity with Indigenous peoples, as the author has also observed, but could have expressed even more concisely. They seek to represent a multifaceted population that identifies with, or has an interest in, the proposed ecological paradigm shift, regardless of individuals’ personal backgrounds or locations. Nonetheless, solidarity remains an important element, as analyzed by the author in lines 567-580. Here, a video is cited that, while not explicitly using the term intersectionality, nevertheless conveys the concept in a highly accessible and pragmatic manner. In lines 581-583, the analysis would benefit from additional glottopolitical contextualization to clarify that the use of specific gender-neutral language (the use of ‘x’) signifies diversity, but also serves as a typical identification marker of urban progressive activists.
Regarding the analysis of multimodal dichotomization strategies, it has been a positive surprise that, although the author likely supports the campaign’s objectives, she critically identifies dichotomization as a core feature of populist discourse. She especially highlights the vague denunciation of an elite, described as „(a small group of) politicians“, „wealthy people“, or „a handful of oil companies“ (lines 662–685), construed in opposition to „we“, which is presumed to represent the majority of Ecuadorians (line 696). Again, this rhetorical pattern seems to echo established features of the Latin American protest repertoire, which would deserve some explicit analysis. While it is necessary to recognize and name populist discourse as what it is, it is equally important to acknowledge that, given the enduring inequalities in Ecuador as in Latin America, populist critiques of political and economic actors are not detached from social reality either.
A revision of the aforementioned aspects should be reflected in the “Conclusion” and “Perspectives” sections as well, where there are still examples of a somewhat simplistic understanding of sumak kawsay in lines 762-774 and 840-851, respectively.
In summary, I recommend that the article undergo some major revisions before it is published on schedule in the JFML, where it will make a valuable contribution.