Digital Ecology: Linguistic Framing of Nature and Biodiversity in Social Media Discourse

Abstract

This study examines the linguistic and multimodal construction of nature and biodiversity in Pakistani social media discourse, with a particular focus on culturally grounded expressions originating from the Hindu belt. Drawing on ecolinguistics and framing theory, it explores how ecological meanings are co-constructed through language, visual representation, and platform-specific affordances, and how these meanings reflect underlying cultural ideologies. Using a qualitative design, 200 public posts (100 from Twitter/X and 100 from Instagram) published between January and June 2024 were purposively selected and analyzed through an integrated ecolinguistic and multimodal discourse framework. The analysis identified four dominant ecological frames: Nature as Victim, Nature as Home, Humans as Guardians, and Nature as Economic Resource. Twitter discourse was characterized by crisis-oriented rhetoric and activist metaphors emphasizing urgency, while Instagram foregrounded aesthetic beauty, emotional attachment, and spirituality through visually rich content and bilingual captions. The findings reveal that environmental discourse in Pakistan's digital ecology is shaped by a balance between rational urgency and affective engagement, mediated by the platform's affordances. The study extends ecolinguistics into a multimodal, non-Western context, underscoring the value of culturally and linguistically grounded approaches to environmental communication.

Keywords: Ecolinguistics; Framing theory; Multimodal discourse; Environmental communication; Social media; Twitter; Instagram; Pakistan; Ecological narratives; Linguistic framing.