Non-governmental organizations visual storytelling on social media : A quantitative content analysis and multimodal analysis of the visual communication by the Red Cross, Save the Children and WWF on Instagram

Storytelling has proven to be more efficient in engaging and influencing the audience’s behavior than fact-based communication. This study examines how three Swedish branches of the non-governmental organizations: the Swedish Red Cross, Save the Children and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) use storytelling in their Instagram communication. The purpose is to study the extent to which storytelling is used and to identify the types of stories that exist. Furthermore, the analysis aims to examine how multimodal resources such as text, image and visual elements work together to tell stories, as well as investigate the similarities and differences between the organizations. The study combines a quantitative content analysis of 166 Instagram posts with a qualitative multimodal analysis of three randomly selected examples of storytelling. The theoretical framework is derived from storytelling, visual storytelling, the core elements of a story, sociosemiotics and semiotics. The results of the quantitative analysis show that the Red Cross and Save the Children use storytelling more frequently than WWF. The first two are more person-centered whereas WWF primarily focuses on animals. The Red Cross primarily uses hero narratives and Save the Children does as well, however, the latter has a more varied distribution of stories used. WWF display a more even spread across four narratives. The analysis shows more similarities between The Red Cross and Save the Children than between them and WWF. These patterns can be explained by each organization's mission and visual focus. The multimodal analysis further illustrates how visual and textual elements collaborate to communicate a message and capture the audience’s attention. Images, color schemes, typography and perspective is used to build a narrative and guide the recipient’s focus. The study finds that storytelling is defined by the organization's key focus and contributes to a deeper insight into how non-governmental organizations communicate complex issues through multimodal storytelling in today’s digital media environment.