Speaking Oats to Power: Exploring Polarization and Agonistic Pluralism in Oatly’s U.S. Brand Activism Discourse

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines brand activism's role in promoting social change through contributing to democratic debates by analyzing Oatly’s environmental brand activist campaigns in a polarized context: the United States. Therefore, the research questions chosen for this thesis examine, firstly, how Oatly discursively constructs their environmental brand activism in the United States; secondly, whether that discourse reinforces division or invites constructive conflict; thirdly, what role brands have in fostering democratic discussion through strategic communication. Agonistic Politics, Social Identity Theory, and Self-categorization Theory were applied to interpret the empirical data consisting of four campaigns. Then, a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA), through Fairclough's three-dimensional framework, was used to analyze the campaigns. The result of this thesis shows that Oatly uses humor, micro-change, and American culture to discursively construct their environmental brand activism. Furthermore, the campaigns chosen for this study were deemed mostly agonistic, inviting constructive conflict by showing diverse opinions. However, Oatly performed more antagonistic communication actions directed towards institutions, which could contribute to the increasing polarization. Lastly, brands have an important role in the democratic debate. Most crucial is how they take a stance and that they create space for productive conflict not to perpetuate polarization. Further findings and practical implications include a softer brand activism approach as well as minimizing ideological implications.