Representations of masculinity in Tesla´s consumer stories A multimodal critical discourse analysis

Considering that scholars have recognized an aggressive and careless style of driving as well as the ability to manually steer and control a vehicle as a major element of “doing masculinity”, and that attention has been called to the incompatibility between the values of intra- and intergenerational respect and care proposed by environmentalism and the competitiveness and aim for short-term success characteristic of hegemonic scripts of masculinity, scholars have pointed to the gendered dimension of the symbolic complications connected with the adoption of both electric and self-driving vehicles for hegemonic masculinities. Drawing upon these premises, this study investigates the gendered dimensions of corporate representations of the transition to electric and automated systems of automobility. Specifically, Tesla is selected as a case study: how do Tesla´s consumer stories related to the transition to electric and automated vehicles discursively shape scripts of hegemonic masculinity? To respond to the research question, the study analyzes Tesla´s consumer stories on YouTube through multimodal critical discourse analysis. In particular, the analysis is methodologically executed through the examination of the “verbal-visual correspondence” between spoken dialogues and visual representations. Drawing upon literature on consumer adoption of electric and self-driving vehicles and on the possible gendered meanings and complications that these types of consumption could entail for different scripts of masculinity, the research argues against the adoption of an instrumentalist approach to the study of automobility. Through the adoption of a symbolic interactionalist view of gender and consumption along with a feminist approach to the study of mobility, the study analyzes how male Tesla owners orchestrate discourses of gender, technology, and sustainability to make sense of patterns of automobility and, most importantly, the gendered scripts that these allow them to enact. The main overarching result indicates that Tesla´s consumer stories illustrate different scripts of masculinity in relation to men of different ages and ethnicities and multimodally connect these to different constructions of Tesla as a vehicle. In this way, the transitions to new patterns of automobility are represented as shaping frames of hegemonic masculinity in racialized and age-dependent ways, so that evidence supporting the theory of intersectionality is provided.