Measuring environmental website communications in Latin American universities: multimodal and ecolinguistic benchmarking

Abstract

Purpose - This paper explores the current state of website environmental communications in Latin American universities through a benchmarking operational tool. The study considers how these universities communicate their environmental policies as an act of corporate social responsibility and in order to improve their public image. Design/methodology/approach - A sample of 80 top-ranked Latin American universities was considered. Environmental websites were evaluated in terms of information quality, multimodal design and stakeholder engagement. The research method follows the theoretical foundations of Critical Discourse Analysis, multimodal studies and ecolinguistics. Findings - 59% of the universities have opened environmental websites. However, many of them have poor content and interactivity. Latin American universities obtain low scores in several objective criteria which measure the efficiency of website environmental communications. Practical implications - The findings can help university administrators to improve the quality and effectiveness of online environmental communications. Some practical recommendations are given and examples of good practice can be emulated. Originality - To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that analyses the situation of website environmental communications in a large sample of Latin American universities. The development of an operational benchmarking tool invites further comparative studies, which may contribute to a wider picture of environmental communications.