Sustainable? Looking at intermedial expressions of sustainability in the social media content of Copenhagen Fashion Week

Abstract

In this conference, I aim to present an analysis and comparison of one YouTube video, and five Instagram posts of Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW) - a non-profit organization responsible for hosting the biannual fashion show of the same name – with a specific focus on the concept of sustainability. Sustainability, which is described to be the core value of CPHFW, is understood in this analysis as a concept of social science that is, according to Bent Flyvbjerg, context-dependent. The “context” in this case features the Youtube video titled Design (2022), part of CPHFW’s sustainability series on the platform, and five select Instagram posts of the same organization from the years 2023 and 2024 that contain an image, as well as a caption mentioning sustainability. Therefore, I look at written and spoken words, as well as audiovisual expressions occurring in still and moving image, across two social media stages with their specific affordances – with the aim to identify and present the expressions of sustainability, and their intermedial transformations and interactions across formats and platforms. In terms of methodology, I utilize Kay O’Halloran’s multimodal discourse analysis and Lars Elleström’s intermedial modalities, in order to identify the expressions themselves, their transformations, and the overall intermedial image and experience of sustainability that can be accessed by the viewer. In the end, I aim to uncover how CPHFW’s image of sustainability is brought forth through, and translated into their verbal and nonverbal communication on social media, and present an - inevitably subjective - assessment of that image of sustainability based on the intermedial analysis.