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COP26 news imagery:
How UK media visualised COP26

As part of my SWDTP-funded placement with Carbon Brief, I attended the Conference of Parties (COP26) in Glasgow in 2021 on a media badge. This project sought to understand how UK newspapers were visually representing the event to the public, as most people learn about COPs from the news media.

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I analysed over 1,300 images taken from online news articles published in 8 leading UK newspapers across a range of ideological positions. 

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While at COP26 and soon afterwards, I spoke to many journalists, editors, and wire agency photographers about the difficulties and complexities of visually representing such an important event to the public. These interviews provide important context and explanation to the findings from my analysis of the images.

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If you're interested to learn more about this work please contact me!

Preliminary 

FINDINGS

1. COP26 was primarily visualised in UK media as a political event, involving high profile personalities. 

The visual discourse of COP26 was very distinct from "normal" climate change visuals

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2. We need to more fully understand the network of photographers, news agencies, and publications, in order to understand how and why COP26 was visualised in this way.

Visualisation of COP26 image dataset, produced using ImagePlot, showing saturation (x axis) and hue (y axis)

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