Climate Change Issue Animals

Digital Methods Initiative -- Amsterdam -- August 23 2007Sabine Niederer & Esther Weltevrede

Research questions:

Which animals are most associated with climate change on the web, in the news and in blogs?

A comparison of the most popular issue animals across the three ‘spheres’.

Are the same issue animals popular in different ‘spheres’?

Web sphere -- via GoogleNews sphere -- via Google News

Blogosphere -- via Technorati

Which animals are endangered by climate change?

Starting point: List of endangered species due to climate change:

polar bear red foxsea turtlemarmotpenguineaglecranePuffinwalrus

sources: www.panda.org & www.greenpeace.org

whaledolphinpandaorangutanelephantfrogtigerpika

Technique

‘Scrape’ the engine results of “climate change” and search within results

3 search engines & 3 tools:www.google.com -- Scrape Googlenews.google.com -- Scrape Google Newswww.technorati.com -- Scrape Technorati

source: www.google.com

http://dmi.mediastudies.nl

http://dmi.mediastudies.nl

http://dmi.mediastudies.nl

http://dmi.mediastudies.nl

Findings

The polar bear is the top issue animal in the news as well as in the blogosphere

The hierarchy among the issue animalsis flattened on the Web (google.com)

Technique

Search images for “climate change” and count within results for each issue animal

3 search engines & manual countingimages.google.com news.google.com www.technorati.com/photos

Categorize & scale results

Findings

For images, in the blogosphere appears to be a “people’s space,” dominated by activists dressed as animals (mainly as a polar bear)

New Issue Animals appear in image research: the methane-emitting cow (Google News) & the activist’s dog (Technorati)

The web and the news show a wider range of animals, including those affected by global cooling.

The blogosphere, however, focuses mainly on global warming