Unravelling Tales of Truth: The Digital Battle Between Greenwashing Giants and Fashion Eco-Warriors

This thesis challenges the contested terrain of sustainability discourses in the global fashion industry, positioning digital platforms as battlefields in the struggle between environmental activism and corporate greenwashing. With a focus on my conceptual contributions, shiny sustainability and digital eco-witnessing, it examines how power, discourse, and digital media combine to mediate public discourse of fashion's environmental crisis. Through a qualitative online content analysis of fast fashion giants H&M and SHEIN, and sustainability-focused influencers Venetia La Manna and Janet Chemitei, this study reveals how online storytelling is used to conceal or expose the true cost of overproduction and waste within the fashion industry. In the thesis, I theorise shiny sustainability as a form of greenwashing, which feeds on glossy and affective narratives created by industry players to generate moral gratification without making credible, evidence-based claims of their sustainability claims. This framework expands and enriches theories of greenwashing and hyperreality. It illustrates how corporate storytelling consolidates consumerism and environmentalism within a performative, commercially driven framework. This narrative diverts consumers' attention from critically questioning these brands, continuing the fast fashion cycle. In comparison, another contribution I included is digital eco-witnessing. This conceptual idea is theorised as a form of environmental testimony for the social media age, whereby independent producers use low-cost, affective, and evidence-driven content to humanise, document, and bear witness to the environmental crisis. Unlike mainstream environmental witnessing, which has a tendency to focus on ecologically contained and geographically limited environmental catastrophes, digital eco-witnessing in fashion makes the global circulation of waste visible, bringing distant harms into proximity with consumer choice in everyday life. By documenting lived experiences of those inundated with textile waste and ecological damage, eco-witnesses transform scientific knowledge, debunk corporate myths, and educate audiences through formats they already use, like TikToks and Instagram Reels, mixing hard evidence with humour, candour, and emotional resonance. This study contributes to eco-media and sustainability studies by illustrating how sustainability meaning-making within the fashion world is not a neutral practice but rather a struggle over legitimacy, visibility, and moral authority. It debunks the myth that narrative control is solely the result of financial hegemony, highlighting how authenticity and human connection can counterbalance corporate scale. The thesis also highlights the changing face of greenwashing, as well as the requirements for vigilant, responsive activism. Finally, this thesis calls for more critical attention to digital sustainability discourses, promoting evidence-driven, human-centred storytelling as a response to corporate greenwashing. In naming and theorising shiny sustainability and digital eco-witnessing, it offers fresh conceptual resources for scholars, activists, and consumers to critique, challenge, and reimagine the ways that fashion's environmental footprint is communicated online.

Grantor dc:publisher

Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Letwaba, Madinani Katleho

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Iqani, Mehita

Language dc:language.iso

en

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/134676

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/134676