Visual Vocabularies in Climate Journalism
If you do a Google image search on the words climate change right now, you will probably see only a few pictures that have human beings in them.
However, there is an abundance of images of polar bears, melting ice, and anonymous smokes in many climate journalism stories, which can be difficult for readers to connect with them.
Journalism is at its strongest when human connections can be made directly from the story to its readers.
According to Rosalind Donald, author of the CJR article, The climate crisis is a story for every beat, human beings need to see themselves in the stories they read and see in order to understand the human connection to its causes, consequences, and potential solutions.
There are too many visuals attached to climate change stories that lack human connections, and they need to be more diverse with human-focused visuals.
Climate image database websites such as Climate Visuals can assist climate journalists with hundreds of pictures for use, with explanations based on research about why certain images might connect with audiences.
Here are a few examples:
Most people feel a strong dislike for waste, and yet the waste from consumer-driven electronics may not be strongly linked to climate change in people’s minds. This image tells a human story about the consequences of the consumer electronics industry, at the end of a long production chain that begins with environmentally-damaging rare mineral extraction.
INDIA,Jharia Dhanbad, parts of Jharia are located above smoldering underground coal seams and will be displaced due to extended open cast coal mining by BCCL Ltd. of Coal India, people fetch water in the morning
Steam rises from Morgan Lake in front of the five-unit, 2,040-megawatt Four Corners Coal Power Plant, located on the Navajo Indian Reservation west of Farmington, New Mexico. Bass fishing is popular in the heated lake. This dramatic image hints at flow-on effects from power plants, where contaminated waters may affect the wildlife, people, and food supply in the region.
According to Dr. Adam Corner, Research Director at Climate Outreach and an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Psychology, Cardiff University, A more diverse, human-focused visual language that connects the climate impacts to our health, wellbeing, and the human impact would revolutionize the visual meaning of climate change.