Climate change communication in India: A study on climate change imageries on Instagram
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
The rising accessibility of mobile phones and the proliferation of social media have revolutionized the way climate change has been communicated. Yet, the inherent invisibility and temporal complexities of climate change pose challenges when trying to communicate it on visual media platforms. This study employs visual content analysis to investigate how environmental non-government organizations (NGOs) in India address these limitations on their Instagram pages. Four environmental NGOs based in India were selected, and their thirty most recent Instagram posts related to climate change were analyzed based on imagery type, subject, context and themes. The findings revealed that these NGOs employed a diverse range of climate change imageries, often accompanied by overlaying texts, to traverse the lack of standardized visual tropes. Moreover, it is noted that a significant majority of analyzed Instagram imageries following the visual principles advocated by Climate Outreach emerged from one single NGO account, suggesting potential variations in the visual communication strategies among different NGOs.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Carvalho, A. (2007). Ideological Cultures and Media Discourses on Scientific Knowledge: Re-Reading News on Climate Change. Public Understanding of Science, 16, 223–243. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662506066775
Cohen, R., Irwin, L., Newton-John, T., & Slater, A. (2019). #bodypositivity: A content analysis of body positive accounts on Instagram. Body Image, 29, 47–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2019.02.007
Corner, A., Webster, R., & Teriete, C. (2015). Climate Visuals: Seven principles for visual climate change communication. Climate Outreach. https://climateoutreach.org/reports/climate-visuals-seven-principles-for-visual-climate-change-communication/
Culloty, E., Murphy, P., Brereton, P., Suiter, J., Smeaton, A., & Zhang, D. (2018). Researching Visual Representations of Climate Change. Environmental Communication, 13, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2018.1533877
DiFrancesco, D. A., & Young, N. (2011). Seeing climate change: The visual construction of global warming in Canadian national print media. Cultural Geographies, 18(4), 517–536.
Doyle, J. (2007). Picturing the Clima(c)tic: Greenpeace and the Representational Politics of Climate Change Communication. Science as Culture, 16(2), 129–150. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505430701368938
Doyle, J. (2011). Mediating Climate Change. In Mediating Climate Change (p. 183). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315594583
Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x
Hulme, M. (2015). Climate and its changes: A cultural appraisal. Geo: Geography and Environment, 2(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.5
Jeffrey, D. W. (2001). The Roles of Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations in the Twenty-First Century. Biology and Environment: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 101B(1/2), 151–156.
Junsheng, H., Akhtar, R., Masud, M. M., Rana, M. S., & Banna, H. (2019). The role of mass media in communicating climate science: An empirical evidence. Journal of Cleaner Production, 238, 117934. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.117934
Lehman, B., Thompson, J., Davis, S., & Carlson, J. M. (2019). Affective Images of Climate Change. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00960
Leiserowitz, A. (2006). Climate Change Risk Perception and Policy Preferences: The Role of Affect, Imagery, and Values. Climatic Change, 77(1), 45–72. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-006-9059-9
León, B., Negredo, S., & Erviti, M. C. (2022). Social Engagement with climate change: Principles for effective visual representation on social media. Climate Policy, 0(0), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2022.2077292
Manzo, K. (2010). Imaging vulnerability: The iconography of climate change. Area, 42(1), 96–107.
Metag, J. (2016). Content Analysis Methods for Assessing Climate Change Communication and Media Portrayals. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.486
Morris, B. S., Chrysochou, P., Christensen, J. D., Orquin, J. L., Barraza, J., Zak, P. J., & Mitkidis, P. (2019). Stories vs. facts: Triggering emotion and action-taking on climate change. Climatic Change, 154(1), 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02425-6
Nicholson-Cole, S. A. (2005). Representing climate change futures: A critique on the use of images for visual communication. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 29(3), 255–273. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2004.05.002
Ockwell, D., Whitmarsh, L., & O’Neill, S. (2009). Reorienting Climate Change Communication for Effective Mitigation: Forcing People to be Green or Fostering Grass-Roots Engagement? Science Communication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547008328969
Ojala, M., Cunsolo, A., Ogunbode, C., & Middleton, J. (2021). Anxiety, Worry, and Grief in a Time of Environmental and Climate Crisis: A Narrative Review. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 46, 35–58. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-022716
O’Neill, S. (2020). More than meets the eye: A longitudinal analysis of climate change imagery in the print media. Climatic Change, 163(1), 9–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02504-8
O’Neill, S. J., Boykoff, M., Niemeyer, S., & Day, S. A. (2013). On the use of imagery for climate change engagement. Global Environmental Change, 23(2), 413–421. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.11.006
O’Neill, S. J., & Hulme, M. (2009). An iconic approach for representing climate change. Global Environmental Change, 19(4), 402–410. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.07.004
O’Neill, S. J., & Smith, N. (2014). Climate change and visual imagery. WIREs Climate Change, 5(1), 73–87. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.249
Schroth, O., Angel, J., Sheppard, S., & Dulic, A. (2014). Visual Climate Change Communication: From Iconography to Locally Framed 3D Visualization. Environmental Communication, 8(4), 413–432. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2014.906478
Suldovsky, B. (2017, September 26). The Information Deficit Model and Climate Change Communication. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.301
Syahrir, Y. (2021). Towards an effective participatory process for a sustainable urban waterfront development. Communications in Humanities and Social Sciences, 1(1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.21924/chss.1.1.2021.6
Thaker, J. (2017). Climate Change Communication in India. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.471
Wang, S., Corner, A., Chapman, D., & Markowitz, E. (2018). Public engagement with climate imagery in a changing digital landscape. WIREs Climate Change, 9(2), e509. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.509
Wolf, J., & Moser, S. C. (2011). Individual understandings, perceptions, and engagement with climate change: Insights from in-depth studies across the world. WIREs Climate Change, 2(4), 547–569. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.120