The visual opportunity spaces of oil: in promotion, protest, and warning

Abstract

This essay illustrates how petroleum, the oil industry, and oil corporations manifest and are manifested across publicly visible and accessible platforms, or visual opportunity spaces, in promotion, conflict, consumption, and warning. The product, industry operations, and brand name corporations are represented as essential entities, benevolent neighbours, educators, or entertainment providers; as problematic or disruptive; or as hazardous. Yet when comparing everyday observations, corporate-sponsored images of goodwill are not equally countered by images of resistance or government-mandated public health warnings. Positive images blanket public opportunity spaces in ways that lead to the normalisation of the industry’s presence and of the consumption and production of petroleum, while critical or cautious visual narratives are minimised to sporadic or event-based protest activities or minuscule and routinised warnings. A comparative analysis sheds light on the imbalance of visual indicators of promotion, criticism, and vigilance. Oil corporations or the industry dominate and are permitted to dominate access to visual spaces in volume, duration, and positive or gratifying sensations that are not equally countered by civil society’s challenges or concerns, or by notices of climate change or human or ecological health risks.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patricia Widener

Patricia Widener is an associate professor of sociology at Florida Atlantic University. She examines conflict and collaboration between communities, environmental and climate groups, and the petroleum industry through the lenses of environmental justice, marine sociology, social movements, and visual sociology. She is the author of Toxic and Intoxicating Oil (forthcoming) and Oil Injustice (2011), which analyze national oil disputes in Aotearoa New Zealand and Ecuador, respectively.