Systematic literature review, 2005-2024

How climate change becomes visible in the media

A guided look at what researchers study, where the evidence clusters, and which visual media remain under-examined.

Studies
124
Period
2005-2024
Recent work
51%
Read the abstract and citation

Climate change visualizations in the media play a crucial role in conveying information, raising awareness, and motivating action. This combined systematic and scoping literature review with content analysis to analyse current research on climate change visualisations in traditional and digital media.

Findings show that existing research concentrates on traditional media, has limited focus on social media, and predominantly studies Western countries. Framing theory emerges as the predominant theoretical framework, especially in qualitative studies.

Citation: Isaac Bravo, Katharina Prasse, Stefanie Walter, Margret Keuper. (2025). Visualizing Climate Change in the Media: A Systematic Literature Review, Challenges, and Future Research. Annals of the International Communication Association. Under review.

1 / Visual Framing

Visuals are not decoration. They carry emotional force.

Images can make climate change feel close, urgent, and politically meaningful. They also shape which risks, solutions, and communities audiences remember.

Warming stripes compress long-term temperature change into a pattern audiences can recognize quickly. Source: Ed Hawkins (2018), Warming Stripes.

Hover or focus marks in the charts for exact values where available.

2 / Publication Timeline

The research boom is recent.

More than half of the reviewed publications appeared from 2020 to 2024.

Takeaway: The timeline shows slow accumulation until the field accelerates in the 2020s.
Takeaway: 63 of 124 publications appear from 2020 to 2024, so the latest platform shifts matter a lot.

3 / Media Coverage

Research still leans toward traditional media.

Traditional outlets dominate the evidence base. Social media is growing, but coverage is uneven across platforms.

Takeaway: Traditional media remains the largest research focus, which makes long-running newspaper and broadcast evidence easier to compare.
Takeaway: Twitter/X and Instagram dominate social-media studies, while TikTok and Reddit are still thinly represented.

4 / Methods

Qualitative work dominates the research area.

Manual content analysis is central to the field, while automated image classification appears rarely.

Audience cue: This is a strength for interpretive depth, but a limitation for comparing visuals at platform scale.

5 / Data Modalities

Most studies still begin with images.

Images are the most common unit of analysis, while video and richer multimodal combinations are less common.

Takeaway: Still images are the most common unit of analysis, making them the field's clearest baseline.
Takeaway: Image-plus-text studies are common, but richer combinations with video and audio remain rare.

6 / Geography

The evidence base has a Global North skew.

The United States, United Kingdom, and Germany appear most often among studied countries.

Takeaway: Ranking the countries makes the US, UK, and Germany concentration easy to see.
Takeaway: The map gives a broader view of reach, including countries that appear only once or twice.

7 / What Comes Next

The next research agenda is about access, scale, and representation.

Next step: Document API limits and platform sampling bias so future reviews can compare evidence quality.
Next step: Pair close reading with computational approaches that are transparent, multilingual, and validated.
Next step: Study visual attacks on climate solutions, not only denial of climate science.
Next step: Build more participatory research with Global South and Indigenous communities.