Visual Politics, Protest, and Power: Who Shaped the Climate Visual Discourse at COP26?

Despite the importance of visual imagery for how people conceptualise issues in the news media, most research on journalism and communication prioritises textual media. This research examines the visual imagery accompanying news stories about the 2021 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow (COP26). Using a mixed-methods approach, we analyse over 1,300 images from eight UK news outlets using content and critical visual discourse analysis. We then contextualise these images, drawing on interviews and participant observation with key visual media actors including image agency photojournalists and news journalists, editors and correspondents. First, we find that the visual discourse of COP26 is limited to politicians and “talking heads” imagery, and images of protest. Second, we explore the journey that images take through the news media ecosystem, from the camera lens to the published news article, identifying the sources of power which act on visuals throughout this journey. Sources of power can be obvious (e.g., individual photographers), whilst others are obscured or misattributed (e.g., curation and editing). Overall, we empirically demonstrate the importance of understanding the networked nature of images and how they move through a complex globalised media ecosystem, rather than conceptualising them simply as static objects in the news cycle.