A Multi-Modal Discourse Analysis of Bank Public Service Advertisements on Instagram

Abstract

The shift in advertisement has gone from Traditional media tools such as newspapers, magazines, letters to modern media tools via television, radio with online/digitalization such as social media which is gradually dominating advertising spaces. Important players in the digital or online platforms include Google, Facebook, Instagram, X, and WhatsApp. It is from the foregoing that this study attempts an investigation of bank advertisements on one of the social media platforms (Instagram) using the multi-modal discourse analysis approach. In this study, five pictorial adverts were selected from GTBank, Union bank and FCMB official pages on Instagram through a purposeful sampling technique. In the analysis of data, Kress and van Leeuwen's Visual Grammar based on Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) was adopted. This grammatical model focuses on the exploration of representational, interactional and compositional meanings adding evidence to the assumption that meaning arises from the use of multiple semiotic resources to investigate linguistic and visual forms of public service advertisement. The study reveals that visual and linguistic elements construct representation and create visual discourse. Finding also shows that banks use Public Service Adverts to create strategic advertisements of their brands based on the shared values of the target viewers to make them feel important and involved. The study concludes that the multi-modal elements in these adverts help greatly in the understanding of how banks construct and negotiate identity, power and ideology for effective marketing of their brands. This plays significant role in influencing consumer behaviour, shaping cultural norms and driving the economic growth of the country.