Southern Visions of Nature: The Digital Visual Communication of Environmental Organisations in Chile

As a global conversation around political transformation and environmental struggles continues, Southern Visions of Nature examines how Chilean environmental organisations use visual digital media to shape public discourse, build collective identity, and collaborate during political upheaval, revealing the unique intersections of environment, politics, and communication in a Global South context.

Through a rich methodological combination, Aravena-Ortiz explores how environmental organisations in Chile use visual media in digital spaces to advocate, mobilise, and construct collective identities during politically charged moments. Providing a compelling case study of a country with deep environmental challenges, ranging from water scarcity to extractive economies, and a society marked by growing ecological awareness and civic mobilisation, the chapters unpack how environmental discourse became a prominent theme in public debate and visual media emerged as key tools in how EOs communicated their concerns and visions for the future. The author reveals how these communication strategies were used to shape public discourse, are shaped themselves by internal logics, and how they interact with formal and informal partnerships. Centring the voices, practices, and visual languages of Chilean organisations, chapters challenges the often Global North-centric narratives that dominate discussions of digital activism.

Providing a cohesive portrait of contemporary environmental communication in Chile, Southern Visions of Nature contributes to multiple academic fields, including environmental communication, media and visual culture studies, political communication, and Latin American studies. It is both a timely scholarly intervention and a testament to the creative resilience of environmental activism in an age of interconnected crises and within the struggle to imagine and communicate a new future from the Global South.

Sebastián Aravena-Ortiz is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Communication and Image of the University of Chile. His research interests include visual, digital, environmental, and political communication, collective identities and branding, Latin America and the Antarctica, and visual and digital methodologies.