Human Rights Discourse and the Environment. Empowering Young Generations through Old and New Media

Over the past decade, it has become more and more important for international organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the Council of Europe (COE) to bridge the knowledge gap between experts and laypeople in order to open a debate about environmental protection as a fundamental human right. By using different media, in particular the Internet, the two organisations have been generating a variety of informative materials in a form that can be easily understood by non-expert citizens, particularly the young generations, to mitigate conflicts and legal disputes and foster a multidirectional dialogue on sensitive issues such as the promotion of a sustainable environment framework. Following the tradition of Social Semiotics and research on Positive Discourse Analysis, this study has analysed a range of different resources related to the environment available on the EU’s and COE’s websites, aimed at explaining citizens the two institutions’ policies in an understandable and attractive way. The analysis has tried to detect the main verbal and visual discursive strategies of knowledge communication and dissemination in order to communicate the institutional/legal discourse on environmental protection and human rights to non-specialists and develop eco-friendly consciousness, especially among the young.