Visual Climate Change Communication: The Role of Images in Teaching Media

The field of climate change communication has long been dominated by text analyses, where the visual representations accompanying the textual have been more or less neglected. However, in recent years scholarly work on visual environmental communication has made progress. Hansen & Machin (2013) lists research encompassing a variety of media and communicative contexts, including television news, newspapers, news and other magazines, advertising, environmental campaigns, and films.

Previous research on media representations of climate change has shown a tendency, in some countries, to “nationalize” the global problem of a climate change – to turn mitigation and adaptation responses into a national responsibility (Berglez, Höijer & Olausson 2009). These processes of nationalization are evident not least in the visual communication of television news by means of, for instance, pictures of maps of the topical country recurrently fading in and out between images of volumes of water. In newspapers, visual nationalization occurs through, for instance, photomontages of the national capital desolated by severe flooding. There are, however, also visual signs of “europeanization” by means of images such as those of the EU flag flying (Olausson 2010).

Research indicates that visual representations of environmental issues and climate change tend to be decontextualized and aestheticized (Linder 2006, Doyle 2007), resulting in symbolic and routinized images whose semiotic openness allows new flexible significations and usage across different genres of communication. The same images meet news organizations need for familiar frames of reference to make issues more easily recognizable to audiences, and the need in advertising and marketing for products and services charged with a moral sense of connecting with nature and the environment. According to Hansen & Machin (2008), commercial image suppliers have significant influence over the visual representation of climate change by providing media with cheap and attractive images.

One genre of communication, not listed above, is teaching media. In order to enter this obviously under-researched area as regards visual environmental communication, this study examines teaching media used in primary and secondary school: Which visual representations are used in order to provide young generations with climate change knowledge? Do we see similar patterns as in news and advertising, or may pupils meet alternative representations that are not primarily characterized by nationalization, decontextualization, aesthetization, and routinization?

In order to avoid a decontextualized analysis, we regard image and text as interacting sign systems and the visual images are analyzed in their textual context. The analytical framework of the study is visual rhetoric, inspired by Kjeldsen (2009) whose analytical concepts have been developed from analyses of Scandinavian political advertising, a genre that is both persuasive and pedagogical. Kjeldsens theoretical point of departure is that images are visual signs that communicate with various rhetorical means.

On September the 7^th , in 2011, all players and managers in KHL team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl were killed in a plane crash. Among the victims were the Swedish goalie Stefan Liv. The collective grief stroke not only his home district but gripped nationwide and also included people far beyond Sweden’s borders. Men and women, old and young, addicted fans and people totally indifferent to ice hockey expressed personal sorrow and sympathy with Stefan Liv’s family, friends and home team HV71.

The vast majority of these grieving people had never met Stefan Liv in person. Yet people mourned, as one does when a close and dear person passed away. Interviews, with a selection of local people of different origin, age, gender and interest in ice hockey, show how close this relation was. The interviews display varied but also consistent perceptions about Stefan Liv as a role model, both on and off the ice hockey rink. Besides these perceptions may have been formed under the influence of recurring media representations of the goal keeper, interviews indicated that media contributed to the reproduction of the ongoing collective grief, partly by retelling their own representations, and partly by publishing bereaved people’s private memories and perceptions of Stefan Liv.  

In light of sociological theory of collective memory, and drawing on agenda setting and reception theory, this extended abstract examines the relation between bereaved people’s memories and images and the media representations of an admired and mortally wounded sports celebrity. Through a content analysis of local media coverage during the weeks after the accident, the media representation of Stefan Liv is constructed. This is compared with the interviewees’ perception in order to highlight the link between the local media agenda setting effects and the media consumers’ reception.

SCIRA 2013 (Literacy and the social media/Digital literacy)

– Anders Svensson & Ylva Lindberg, HLK, Jönköping

Normer och attityder i ett allt mer digitaliserat svenskämne.

När skriftkulturen förändras genom de digitala medierna, håller även svenskämnet på att förändras (Erixon 2012). Privata och offentliga texter glider in i varandra, liksom privata och offentliga skriftpraktiker (Meyrowitz 1985). Även om skolan i flera avseenden kommit långt med att integrera ny teknik i undervisningen, betyder det inte att lärare arbetar medvetet för att svara upp mot de datormedierade skrivmöjligheter som används i samhället (Sofkova Hashemi 2008). Digital literacy kan ses som en kompetens som byggs i samverkan, via nätet och mot ett gemensamt mål (Gee & Hayes, 2011; Kalantzis and Cope 2011). Vi menar dock att denna kompetens även beror av attityder och normer gentemot medierna.

I vår studie har vi via en enkät tillfrågat alla studenter, däribland blivande svensklärare, på Högskolan för lärande och kommunikation (Jönköping) under vt 2011 om deras syn på medier i förhållande till språk. Deras svar kompletteras med intervjuer med svensklärare på fältet. I materialet urskiljer vi i stora drag dels en normativ uppfattning om vilka medier som har företräde, dels en mer öppen attityd till medieanvändning. Vi kallar dessa större grupper för ”whatevers” och ”controlers” (Baron 2010). Intervjuerna ger indikationer om hur de olika kategorierna arbetar didaktiskt i svenskan och hur deras attityder påverkar svenskans innehåll och metoder.

Resultaten väcker även frågor kring hur lärarutbildningen förhåller sig till begreppet medier, då en stor del av de blivande svensklärarna uppvisar normativa attityder som kan kategoriseras som ”controlers”.

Referenser:

Baron, N. S. (2010). Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Erixon, P.-O. (2012). Svenskämnet i ett nytt medieekologiskt sammanhang. In Skar, G. & Tengberg,

M. (red.). Svenskämnet i går, i dag, i morgon. Stockholm: Svensklärarföreningen/Natur & Kultur, 178-193.

Gee, J. P. & Hayes, E. R. (2011). Language and Learning in the Digital Age. New York: Routledge.

Cope, Bill, Kalantzis, Mary & Magee, Liam (2011). Towards a semantic web: connecting knowledge in academic

research. 1. publ. Oxford: Chandos.

Meyrowitz, Joshua (1985). No sense of place: the impact of electronic media on social behavior. New York:

Oxford University Press.

Sofkova Hashemi, S. (2008). Kommunikationsteknik och skrivande hos svenska barn. In Domeij, R.

(red.). Tekniken bakom språket. Stockholm: Norstedts, 121-142.

On September the 7^th , in 2011, all players and managers in the Russian KHL team Yaroslavl were killed in a plane crash. Among the victims were the Swedish goalie Stefan Liv. The collective grief stroke not only his home district but gripped nationwide and also included people far beyond Sweden’s borders. Men and women, old and young, addicted fans and people totally indifferent to ice hockey expressed personal sorrow and sympathy with Stefan Liv’s family, friends and hockey team HV71.

The vast majority of these grieving people had never met Stefan Liv in person. Their perception of him must have been created in other ways. One of these is most likely the media in which Stefan Liv recurrently was depicted as a sportsmanlike gold hero with a sparkle in his eye and his feet on the ground. Probably, media also contributed to the reproduction of the ongoing collective grief by portraying people’s passionate expressions of the loss of the apparently positive identity represented  by Stefan Liv.

Drawing on the understanding of collective grief as an inversion of Durkheim’s notion of collective effervescence, this paper examines the relationship between media representations of identity and people’s perceptions of it as the basis of their unexpected temporary social relations caused by a tragic incident. Data were collected through interviews with people involved in the collective grief. Respondents were selected  in order to achieve variation in gender, age and interest. The answers describe different views of the identity that formed the basis of the collective grief, media’s contribution to the creation of it, and to the reproduction of the grieving process after the  goalkeeper Stefan Liv’s tragic death.

Blivande svensklärare och sociala medier

Läroplanen för grundskola och gymnasium i svenska 2011 talar om integrering av olika former av medieteknologi. Språk ska läras i olika situationer, genom skilda genrer och eleverna ges möjlighet att reflektera över olika typer av språk som medierna genererar. Det framgår således att medier inte bara är ett kommunikationsverktyg. Hur ser det då ut för blivande svensklärare i deras utbildning? Den senaste forskningen (Pearson Social Media Survey 2010, Hrastinski 2011) visar att sociala medier används just som kommunikationsverktyg mellan lärare och studenter, i syfte att organisera och informera. Men målet med dessa medier är mer ambitiöst ställt, då styrdokumenten visar att de ska vara en del av svenskämnet.

Som ett första led i utvecklandet av tvärvetenskaplig didaktisk forskning vid högskolan i Jönköping, har därför en enkät genomförts i syfte att ta reda på villkoren för studenters medieanvändning. Frågor har ställts om studenters: - uppfattningar om medier - användning av medier och medieutbud - samt, uppfattningar om mediernas påverkan på språket Av de ca 700 respondenterna, som återstår efter bortfall, är 60 blivande svensklärare.

En del av undersökningen fokuserar på sociala medier då dessa idag är väl integrerade i unga människors livsvärldar och informella lärande. Aktuell forskning visar att svenskundervisningen därför kräver matchning mellan elevernas erfarenheter och undervisningens innehåll (Olin-Scheller 2006). Ur detta perspektiv är det betydelsefullt att undersöka förutsättningarna för hur blivande svensklärare integrerar sociala medier i sin undervisning.

I vår föredragning kommer vi att diskutera två viktiga förutsättningar för integration av sociala medier i, såväl högre som mer grundläggande, undervisning. Vi vill, för det första, problematisera förståelsen av begreppet sociala medier, för det andra, problematisera användandet av sociala medier i undervisning.

När vi använder begreppet sociala medier, menar vi webbaserade applikationer på nätet som gör det möjligt för användarna att ta del av, producera och distribuera information. Vår undersökning visar att vi måste gå från att oreflekterat använda begreppet sociala medier till analys av varje applikations särdrag och användbarhet (Dawson 2007), samt i skolans fall hur de ska förstås i ljuset av ämnesdidaktisk forskning.

Vår undersökning visar också att man vid integrering av sociala medier i undervisning måste ta hänsyn till olika kategorier bland användarna, i detta fall studenter och elever.

Resultaten visar på gruppskillnader och därmed olika förutsättningar hos studenterna, som kan vara av betydelse för integreringen av sociala medier i undervisningen. Resultaten har vidare betydelse för utvecklingen av svenskämnet inom lärarprogrammet.

Swedish governmental policy insists on the need for public museums to turn to digital users.  This applies in particular the need for urban-centered societal institutions with regional responsibility, like regional public museums, to reach out to and include rural and coastal citizens. Most public Swedish museums today offer limited digital participatory opportunities to its users, such as blogs, on-line compe­titions, web shops, etc., however, still mostly at an experimental stage. The simple fact that there are various functioning forms for digital participa­tion available, does not in any simple way transform into actual, well-functioning user participation. Such practices instead need to become parts of museums’ overall strategies and also have to be thoroughly appropriated into everyday institutional practice.

Drawing on the notion of social demand (Olsson & Svensson 2012) this paper will present and discuss a research and development approach that we are applying in our effort to ana­lyse and to help elaborate instances of user participation among regional Swedish museums. In general terms, the approach is sensitive towards the web’s co-creative possibilities by help of analyses of best (participatory) web-practices, and it includes a research design that both accounts for and involves users’ deliberate and reflexive preferences.

More particularly, this paper will discuss strategies to examine the preferences of a regional museum’s users’ in general, and their rural and coastal potential users in particular. Drawing on methodology from audience research the paper will outline a potential design to document and map citizens demands on their regional (digital) museum.

Swedish governmental policy insists on the need for public museums to turn to digital users.  This applies in particular the need for urban-centered societal institutions with regional responsibility, like regional public museums, to reach out to and include rural and coastal citizens. Most public Swedish museums today offer limited digital participatory opportunities to its users, such as blogs, on-line compe­titions, web shops, etc., however, still mostly at an experimental stage. The simple fact that there are various functioning forms for digital participa­tion available, does not in any simple way transform into actual, well-functioning user participation. Such practices instead need to become parts of museums’ overall strategies and also have to be thoroughly appropriated into everyday institutional practice.

Drawing on the notion of social demand (Olsson & Svensson 2012) this paper will present and discuss a research and development approach that we are applying in our effort to ana­lyse and to help elaborate instances of user participation among regional Swedish museums. In general terms, the approach is sensitive towards the web’s co-creative possibilities by help of analyses of best (participatory) web-practices, and it includes a research design that both accounts for and involves users’ deliberate and reflexive preferences.

More particularly, this paper will discuss strategies to examine the preferences of a regional museum’s users in general, and their rural and coastal potential users in particular. Drawing on methodology from audience research the paper will outline a potential design to document and map citizens demands on their regional (digital) museum.

Is contemporary media ecology an ecology that offers unprecedented freedom for producing participators, the “prod-users,” or could it also be understood as an ecology in which various forms of user participation are in fact conditioned, or manufactured, by professional producers? Considering the increasing research attention paid to various notions of user participation, these questions become important. This article critically discusses the theorising of mediated participation by illustrating and analysing ways in which users’ participatory practices in fact can be both conditioned and formatted by producers making strategic use of participatory opportunities. By drawing on an ethnographically inspired case study of a web company, Moderskeppet, this analysis reveals how the actual possibilities for participation thoroughly are conditioned by producers. The paper also analyses strategies and techniques applied by the producers to create a sense of participation among users.