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Visualising climate change: the case of the intergovernmental panel on climate change's cover images
Climate change is an increasingly urgent problem. How it is communicated and represented are of interest to those seeking to understand action or inaction on the issue. There is increasing interest on how it is being communicated visually. This research speaks to the growing body of literature on th...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Department of Environmental and Geographical Science
2016
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| _version_ | 1867614431556403200 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Claassens, Katrine Brink |
| author2 | Rijsdijk, Ian |
| author_browse | Claassens, Katrine Brink Rijsdijk, Ian |
| author_facet | Rijsdijk, Ian Claassens, Katrine Brink |
| author_sort | Claassens, Katrine Brink |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | Climate change is an increasingly urgent problem. How it is communicated and represented are of interest to those seeking to understand action or inaction on the issue. There is increasing interest on how it is being communicated visually. This research speaks to the growing body of literature on the visual communication of climate change in order to contribute to the wider critical literature addressing the role of images in the communication of climate change. It does so by considering a neglected site of climate change imagery: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) report covers. The IPCC's report covers from the first ones in 1990, to the latest ones of 2014, are investigated in this quantitative and qualitative case study where the subject matter, both literal and symbolic of this (hitherto unexamined) body of images, is interrogated. This dissertation sought to identify and investigate what, exactly, the IPCC is using to visually represent and communicate climate change outside the realm of its scientific graphs and diagrams. It sought to compare these findings with the larger lexicon of climate change imagery and look at how the IPCC negotiates the communicational and representational problems inherent in the visual communication of climate change. The question ultimately asked was whether the IPCC's cover images are effective representations of climate change. What was found was that the IPCC images departed significantly from standard climate imagery. The conclusions drawn from the initial content and thematic analysis was that the IPCC images are frequently too banal, bland and decontextualized to be effective representations or communicators of climate change but do offer some potentially effective avenues overlooked in other representations. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/20704 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:51:56.325Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publishDateRange | 2016 |
| publishDateSort | 2016 |
| publisher | Department of Environmental and Geographical Science |
| publisherStr | Department of Environmental and Geographical Science |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/20704 Visualising climate change: the case of the intergovernmental panel on climate change's cover images Claassens, Katrine Brink Rijsdijk, Ian Pasquini, Lorena Climate Change and Sustainable Development Climate change is an increasingly urgent problem. How it is communicated and represented are of interest to those seeking to understand action or inaction on the issue. There is increasing interest on how it is being communicated visually. This research speaks to the growing body of literature on the visual communication of climate change in order to contribute to the wider critical literature addressing the role of images in the communication of climate change. It does so by considering a neglected site of climate change imagery: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) report covers. The IPCC's report covers from the first ones in 1990, to the latest ones of 2014, are investigated in this quantitative and qualitative case study where the subject matter, both literal and symbolic of this (hitherto unexamined) body of images, is interrogated. This dissertation sought to identify and investigate what, exactly, the IPCC is using to visually represent and communicate climate change outside the realm of its scientific graphs and diagrams. It sought to compare these findings with the larger lexicon of climate change imagery and look at how the IPCC negotiates the communicational and representational problems inherent in the visual communication of climate change. The question ultimately asked was whether the IPCC's cover images are effective representations of climate change. What was found was that the IPCC images departed significantly from standard climate imagery. The conclusions drawn from the initial content and thematic analysis was that the IPCC images are frequently too banal, bland and decontextualized to be effective representations or communicators of climate change but do offer some potentially effective avenues overlooked in other representations. 2016-07-25T11:31:06Z 2016-07-25T11:31:06Z 2016 Master Thesis Masters MPhil http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20704 eng application/pdf Department of Environmental and Geographical Science Faculty of Science University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | Climate Change and Sustainable Development Claassens, Katrine Brink Visualising climate change: the case of the intergovernmental panel on climate change's cover images |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | Visualising climate change: the case of the intergovernmental panel on climate change's cover images |
| title_full | Visualising climate change: the case of the intergovernmental panel on climate change's cover images |
| title_fullStr | Visualising climate change: the case of the intergovernmental panel on climate change's cover images |
| title_full_unstemmed | Visualising climate change: the case of the intergovernmental panel on climate change's cover images |
| title_short | Visualising climate change: the case of the intergovernmental panel on climate change's cover images |
| title_sort | visualising climate change the case of the intergovernmental panel on climate change s cover images |
| topic | Climate Change and Sustainable Development |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20704 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT claassenskatrinebrink visualisingclimatechangethecaseoftheintergovernmentalpanelonclimatechangescoverimages |