The Images of Climate Change over the Last 20 Years: What Has Changed in the Portuguese Press?
Brigitte Nerlich
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic of this article is very important and interesting. How have the images of climate change used in the media changed over time? This is especially important as climate change as a topic of media coverage has recently changed. It is no longer a distant future threat, but it is on everybody’s doorstep, even in Europe: floods, wildfires, heatwaves are regularly reported. Climate change is here.
It was therefore slightly disconcerting to read the introduction to this article which is like a throw-back to the olden times, citing old literature from around 2005 etc. That was weird. We live in different times now. However, it WOULD be interesting if the authors found that extreme events were not reported under ‘climate change’ in this newspaper! (This is from 2018 and lots happened afterwards https://www.cdp.net/en/articles/climate/portugals-extreme-weather-when-climate-change-knocks-at-your-door) (https://www-macaubusiness-com.webpkgcache.com/doc/-/s/www.macaubusiness.com/portugal-among-worst-hit-in-terms-of-gdp-by-extreme-weather-events/)
The literature review on images in climate change was ok, overall. But the authors seem to have overlooked just a few articles and ‘grey literature’ that might be of interest
O'Neill, S. (2022). Defining a visual metonym: A hauntological study of polar bear imagery in climate communication. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 47(4), 1104-1119.
Hayes, S., & O'Neill, S. (2021). The Greta effect: Visualising climate protest in uk media and the Getty images collections. Global Environmental Change, 71, 102392.
And somewhat older
Nerlich, B., & Jaspal, R. (2014). Images of extreme weather: Symbolising human responses to climate change. Science as Culture, 23(2), 253-276.
See also, in terms of grey literature: https://climatevisuals.org/climate-visuals/
The authors employ a ‘content’ and framing analysis of the images they found in a Portuguese newspaper of some renown between 2000 and 2022. For coding they use frames previously used by other people. This is an appropriate method, in principle. However, wouldn’t it have been better to code the images for frames afresh and see what frames emerge, especially given the changes in climate change impacts in Europe, as well as the changes and intensity of politics and protests? The frames don’t quite make sense to me, so using them to look for change then becomes quite arbitrary. And in the absence of images or at least description of images, it is very difficult to visualise what the images underneath the categories would look like!
I shall now go through the article and make a few comments as I go along.
The title: It should indicate that this is about visualisations of CC in the Portuguese Press
p. 2 they mention Pearce et al., but don’t really engage with the article
p. 2 They talk about the invisibility of climate change effects. That is no longer the case, see above.
p. 2 line 84 “It is therefore surprising that the shift from text-based to image-based analysis has not yet occurred in its entirety” where has this not occurred?
p. 2 line 89: “Although climate imagery has expanded gradually to the present day and is currently at its peak,” how do you know?
p. 2 line 92 is climate change imagery really neglected in the literature – where is it done more?
P. 3 line 106 how do you know that images empower people – don’t you also argue that they don’t?
Framing categories listed – the category of ‘common people’ is very broad. There is surely a difference to showing women wading through waters in Bangladesh to protesters halting flights at Heathrow; industrial impact – they don’t mention fossil fuels and corporations; storms – what about other extreme events like floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, thawing of permafrost, thawing of ice etc etc.; why focus on polar bears and not on emaciated camels or whatever? And mention O’Neill’s new article on polar bears and synecdoche
The research questions and methods are fine, but see above. Why rely on other people’s frames?
p. 6 line 223 – what is a reference newspaper?
Frames – they are very broad – could one have some example descriptions of images that come under these frames, as it’s difficult to ‘visualise’ these generic frames
Why are climate impacts called ‘Pandora’s Box’ -why do they talk about ‘dramatising’ -again, without an example this is difficult to visualise – the impacts of climate change are generally dramatic though ??? And why is destruction of biodiversity imagery poetic or aesthetic? The authors employ the notion of visual synecdoche without mentioning O’Neill’s work on the matter. And Iconography is a very broad term…
I would have expected more images under the conflict frame as protests are increasing, e.g. Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion etc.
Could they give an example of an image of behaviour change? Hopefully not just solar panels?
P. 10 footnote be careful in what you say about climategate, don’t repeat climate sceptics’ talking points https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2019/nov/09/climategate-10-years-on-what-lessons-have-we-learned
p. 12 line 390 Have you checked the images? What about European floods, heatwaves and wildfires?
Why do you call images of climate impacts ‘sensationalist’ – that is a rather risky value judgement perhaps
P. 12 line 415 – why talk about the ‘politicisation’ of climate change – climate change is a political issue
p. 13 first line – give an example
Overall, this is an important article. However, the authors might want to look at their frame categories afresh after looking at the images afresh and see whether the increase in extreme weather events in Portugal has had an impact on climate change reporting over time and if not why not.
It is very difficult for the readers to visualise the images that are categorised underneath the label of a frame. So, for each frame, please provide a description of an image or, if at all possible, an image. I know that’s difficult, given copyright constraints etc.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
An interesting study examining visual communication of climate change in the Portuguese press. There are a few comments I have before I would recommend for publication for the author/s to consider. -My largest concern is the lack of depth provided by the content analysis. Some interesting frames were constructed but I felt that not enough analysis was provided to get a clear sense of how the media source is communicating climate change visually. Some other more minor comments: -I wasn't clear why Portugal was the focus for this analysis. Although arguments were outlined for why the particular outlet was chosen for analysis, it's not clear why this particular country context overall -key provided in figure 1 but also provided under the bars - seems a bit redundant -the author/s mention that an intercoder reliability analysis wasn't conducted but discussions were held on a smaller sample - how was agreement reached? -any example images possible to include? Although recognising rights issues may prevent this -were differences significant? Given content analysis used, could conduct some chi-square analyses to investigate?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have vastly improved the paper. Well done! The paper can now be published. I am looking forward to seeing it out in the wild!
Reviewer 2 Report
thanks for addressing the queries raised in the first round of review.
