Investigating representations of glacial-ice in National Geographic’s climate change coverage between 1978-2018
My MSc thesis from the UWE Science Communication Course was completed in 2019. It explored a number of issues about the effectiveness of photo-essays within science communication.
Scope
When working within the photo-essay format used by National Geographic Magazine (NGM) journalists and editors face challenges in engaging audiences with complex issues such as climate change. This study investigated the changing representations of glacial ice within NGM’s coverage of climate change between 1978 and 2018. A theory, grounded in the data and integrated with existing literature, was developed to explain the findings.
Qualitative analysis of twenty seven articles and seven editorials showed how NGM’s representations of glacial ice, in the context of the magazine’s coverage of climate change, evolved through three distinct phases. The mix of content, communication modes (text, image, infographic), the explanatory links and multi-modal representations characterising each phase showed: NGM’s changing, but often tacit, synthesis of the state of climate science; limitations of the magazine’s photo-essay format; and the impacts of the social practices within NGM (such as reporting norms) during the relevant period. Analysis shows that NGM’s framing of climate change and the representations of glacial ice became aligned with accepted climate-science only after 2003.
This study extended previous research results on how popular science magazines, such as NGM, present climate-change issues using multiple modes of communication. It suggested a growing role for infographics in print magazines to compensate for inherent limitations of photographic images when communicating about causal relationships. The developed theory explains the study results and suggests science communicators will benefit from matching their choices of frame and modalities to characteristics of the underlying science and the associated social, economic and political systems being reported on.
Conclusions
The study concluded that NGM
shifted from a position of limited alignment with scientific consensus and extensive “false balance” reporting to strong alignment with climate science over the period of the study;
changed representations of glacial ice as the magazine’s position on the science and associated social impacts of climate change evolved;
increasingly used photographic images as evidence for change and infographics to communicate about causal links; and
evolved their use of the photo-essay format over the timescale of the study by increasingly tailoring content to particular modes and using (post-2003, and especially post-2014) more sophisticated infographics to provide necessary causal explanations.
The detailed, and rather dry, academic report can be found here.
Notes
A series of notes describing the research methods, analysis process, key results, and some lessons for using photo-essays within science communication will be found below.
Thematic Summary of Key Results
Analysis Approach
Observations on the role of Multimodality in Climate Change Communication
Applying Grounded Theory Method - Some Observations
Implications for constructing photo-essays
Current Research Project - Grounded Theory Method Analysis of Documentary Photography Projects
The MSc project demonstrated that Grounded Theory was a powerful way to analyse the selected photo-essays published in National Geographic Magazine. The question arises whether a similar approach can establish the meanings behind the images and text of documentary photography projects. The exploration of suitable research questions and topics to study will be discussed in the Blog.