According to an article from five years ago, The Wadden Sea National Park (TWSNP) published a new magazine in which local stories and projects are told. In the article, the communication con-sultant of the organisation is quoted, saying that the people behind the organisation wish to tell local stories in order to inspire people to go out into the park and experience the park for them-selves. However, this can be an issue. It is in the best interest of TWSNP (and other national parks) to keep the area safe from potential harm caused by humans – so the question remains; how can TWSNP encourage people to connect with the nature of The Wadden Sea without risking impact or harm done by the same people? With this statement in mind, the researchers of the following master thesis wish to explore the use of storytelling in organisational communication, using The Wadden Sea National Park’s official Facebook page as the case study.
Firstly, this paper explores the field of narrative theory and organisational storytelling theory, in order to understand the existing scientific literature on the subject. Secondly, the paper explores the field of social media usage in organisations, fear appeals, and views of nature in theory.
The primary method used is coding as explained by Saldaña (2009; 2011).
The analysis will primarily be based in Roland Barthes’ semiotic analysis, Rhetoric of the Im-age (1977), including the theoretical terms: Denotation, connotation, and the linguistic message. The analysis will also be based in theories on practical storytelling in organisational communica-tion by mainly R. J. Garmston (2019) and Fog et al. (2005).
In the discussion, the researchers will reflect on their choice of theorical basis as well as discuss the results of the analysis, including a re-occurring narrative in which nature is a character in dan-ger, threatened and in need of human assistance. Another re-occurring narrative includes nature as a place rather than a character; a place from which humans can learn.
In conclusion, this paper manages to shed light on re-occurring narratives found on the official Facebook-page of The Wadden Sea National Park. By conducting a coding system and with a lit-erary insight into the history of narrative structure, plus how to use storytelling in practice, it was possible to identify re-occurring narratives about human’s relation to nature.
Although this project cannot tell us what TWSNP wants to achieve through their Facebook-posts, we can conclude that their core story is about humans engaging with nature, whether as activists or as passive observers.