Audiovisual and digital narratives of eco-anxiety: consciousness, emotions and youth practices

Abstract

This article examines eco-anxiety as part of a genealogy of “diseases of the time”, in continuity with melancholy, neurasthenia, and stress, each articulating historically situated forms of collective suffering. Rather than treating eco-anxiety as a clinical disorder, the study interprets it as a cultural and affective phenomenon, shaped by both visual regimes and discursive formations. The corpus brings together environmental documentaries (Before the Flood, 2016; Demain, 2015) and digital micro-narratives on TikTok (#Ecotok, #Everydaylife), analyzed through close audiovisual reading combined with an interdisciplinary framework: history of emotions, visual culture and youth studies, assemblage theory, and a Foucauldian history of discourses. This approach shows continuities and ruptures in the ways societies narrate distress, distribute subjects and objects, and render crisis visible. By showing how micro-narratives transform anxiety into affective digital healthcare, the article demonstrates how vulnerability becomes a cultural resource and a key site for rethinking the nexus of medicine, media, and collective emotions.