Envirotronically speaking: A case study of dis-identification in online industrial and oppositional discourse about global warming

Corporations such as Exxon Mobil and environmentalist groups such as Greenpeace realize the potential of the Internet from a public relations standpoint. They have taken their industrial and oppositional discourse about global warming online through campaigns meant to appear motivated by grassroots impulses but which, as in the case of Exxon Mobil, are often motivated by profit. This study combines rhetorical and media studies approaches in performing semiotic analysis of online texts related to global warming. It concludes that corporations and environmentalists are making innovative use of this new medium in communicating their respective ideologies, but that corporate texts reflect signs and strategies that obscure their sources' primary locus on profit and are, consequently, less transparent.