Abstract
This paper will present work in progress on the ways in which organizations use short documentary forms for their environmental communication activities, moving on from ideas put forward in Green Documentary (Hughes, 2014). In the context of debates about hydraulic fracturing, online video has been used for advocacy, putting forward arguments that represent different points of view and that include explicit refutations of other online videos. This paper, however, looks at a different context for online environmental video, namely the context of corporate social responsibility or CSR and the video representing corporate sponsorship and promotion of sustainability activities. This kind of video has developed as a means to present the ‘social face’ of corporations but also of other types of institution. They are closely connected with but not the same as marketing videos. They promote not only the activity portrayed but also the sponsoring organization and also the makers of the video itself. In their promotion of both their patrons and their makers and in their focus on the environment as fragile and in need of support, they can be seen as contemporary versions of the Vanitas painting that developed in the context of the Dutch Golden Age.