IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jriskr/v12y2009i5p647-663.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Climate change in the British press: the role of the visual

Author

Listed:
  • N. W. Smith
  • H. Joffe

Abstract

The present investigation identifies the key images that British newspapers use to represent climate change risks. In doing so, it widens the scope of the burgeoning literature analysing textual content of climate change media information. This is particularly important given visual information's ability to arouse emotion, and the risk perception literature's increasing focus on the importance of affect in shaping risk perception. From a thematic analysis of newspaper images, three broad themes emerged: the impact of climate change, personification of climate change and representation of climate change in graphical form. In particular, the depiction of climate change as an issue affecting domestic populations rather than just other areas of the world brings the threat closer to home. Challenging the perception that climate change is still a long-term and future-orientated threat, visual images concretise the risk by providing viewers with tangible examples of climate change's impact.

Suggested Citation

  • N. W. Smith & H. Joffe, 2009. "Climate change in the British press: the role of the visual," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(5), pages 647-663, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:12:y:2009:i:5:p:647-663
    DOI: 10.1080/13669870802586512
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669870802586512
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13669870802586512?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Saffron O’Neill, 2020. "More than meets the eye: a longitudinal analysis of climate change imagery in the print media," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 9-26, November.
    2. Denise Voci, 2022. "Logos, Ethos, Pathos, Sustainabilitos? About the Role of Media Companies in Reaching Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-17, February.
    3. Giuseppe Crapa & Maria Elena Latino & Paolo Roma, 2024. "The performance of green communication across social media: Evidence from large‐scale retail industry in Italy," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(1), pages 493-513, January.
    4. Richard D. Besel & Krista Burke & Vana Christos, 2017. "A life history approach to perceptions of global climate change risk: young adults’ experiences about impacts, causes, and solutions," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 61-75, January.
    5. Zijian Harrison Gong & Haoran Chu, 2022. "Seeing Risks or Solutions: Psychological Distance and Ecological Worldview Moderated the Effect of Disgust Images on Attention to Environmental Messages," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, June.
    6. Ran Duan & Adam Zwickle & Bruno Takahashi, 2017. "A construal-level perspective of climate change images in US newspapers," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 142(3), pages 345-360, June.
    7. Arjan Wardekker & Susanne Lorenz, 2019. "The visual framing of climate change impacts and adaptation in the IPCC assessment reports," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 273-292, September.
    8. Nicholas Smith & Anthony Leiserowitz, 2012. "The Rise of Global Warming Skepticism: Exploring Affective Image Associations in the United States Over Time," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(6), pages 1021-1032, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:12:y:2009:i:5:p:647-663. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJRR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.