Visualizing a global crisis. Constructing climate, future and present

Abstract

This article examines the visualization of climate change through two empirical studies. First, a quantitative overview of the visuals emerging in newspapers in 15 different countries before, during and after the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009. The findings demonstrate a variety of visual topics as well as genres, and a global diversity having to do with press conventions as well as access to resources. Then follows an in-depth study of a small number of cartoons published in the same period addressing global conflict, most of them linked to framing the Global North as responsible for the development of climate change. Leaning on Barthes and supplemented by other scholars who have studied media visualization, the article discusses the particular challenges of climate change as an often unseen phenomenon.