How Do We “View” Climate Change?

Science is not accessible. 

Large words and complicated concepts make it exceedingly difficult to communicate and understand scientific facts and ideas. Even visual representations like graphs are indecipherable without understandable labels.

With little foundational knowledge, individuals often need to “see it to believe it” or be able to observe something in order to understand it. In the technological age of social media, TikTok stars and climate scientists alike are working to make accessible content about the climate crisis. Nowadays it’s mainstream to talk about eco-consumerism and climate change. As we become increasingly dependent on our technology and engrossed in social media we see more and more of this content. It’s important to understand how visual imagery of the environment shapes societal understanding of climate change. 

In 2010 researchers conducted a study evaluating viewers’ reactions to seeing environmental visual imagery in newspapers. While the paper medium is not often used anymore, the message of climate change remains the same. Their findings can give us insight into how people respond to visual imagery about the climate crisis. 

Their results showed that climate images generally promoted feelings of saliency, but provoked negative emotions. Most reliably negative were images of receding sea ice. Their study then revealed a conundrum: images of climate impacts promoted feelings of saliency but undermined self-efficacy, images of clean energy futures promoted self-efficacy but did not produce a sense of urgency in viewers, and images of politicians and celebrities undermined feelings of saliency. They determined few images would promote feelings of saliency and self-efficacy at the same time.

Young environmental activists need to understand the importance and impact of the content they create. Information and visual imagery on social media platforms can disseminate very quickly regardless of authenticity. Despite drawbacks, visual imagery offers an effective tool at eliciting attention to the climate crisis.

The journal Science believed in the effectiveness of this imagery and went so far as to pair a 2010 letter “Climate Change and the Integrity of Science” with a photoshopped image of a struggling polar bear to underscore the urgency of their message

Oh, the irony.

With the inundation of technology in our society, It’s important for both consumers and producers of media to understand the benefits and drawbacks of visual media. Particularly when it comes to environmental activism. With a multitude of new platforms from Youtube to Facebook, it’s crucial to communicate the reality of climate change in a way that is factual, engaging and helpful.

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