Climate (Communication) Emergency is the result of a process of collection, organisation and analysis of climate change representations in the online environment of weather forecasts. It was conceived and designed as a device for a critic and holistic exploration of the visual and conceptual landscapes inspected.
In a context in which governments and companies prove to be reluctant to seriously confront the climate crisis, citizens and individuals could play a fundamental role influencing the political and economic agenda. For this to happen, however, there needs to be a shared understanding of the climate emergency stressing both urgency and agency.
Local impacts of climate change. On the left: flooding caused by Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, Mar 2019 (World Vision). On the right: drought-led low water levels at Presa del Parralillo, Gran Canaria, Spain, Dec 2017 (Jan Helebrant).
Weather forecast websites and platforms can play a critical role in spreading knowledge on the issue through meaningful, engaging and empowering communications. They are globally spread, and they have the opportunity to connect local impacts to the wider picture, engaging communities through concrete accounts of extreme weather events and finally empowering them in the demand of systemic change.
Some of the online weather forecast websites, platforms and communications analysed.
This project is meant to map the representations of the climate crisis produced and shared by weather forecast platforms and websites in order to detect and highlight trends, patterns, recurring features and imaginaries - and, in the end, provide a structure for the evaluation of their efficacy.
The online weather forecast landscape is analysed through various case studies organised in three research protocols. Each protocol answers a single question, connected to a specific communicative context:
The work on the case studies is translated into a report, structured in sections according to the aformentioned protocols. The sections share a similar structure, meant to encourage cross-protocol comparisons: they open with a data collection phase, followed by the analysis. Data of three kinds (texts - images - urls) is mapped through various visualisations, whose construction processes are explained in detail.
↓ Explore the report ↓
