Sylvia Hayes

@c3ds.bsky.social @exeter.ac.uk @uniofexeternews.bsky.social

As always, thanks to the amazing @carbonbrief.org for their support of my PhD work!

🔄 Images used strategically show how transformative journalism can defend objectivity while still connecting with audiences on a human level.

⚖️ Images can blur the lines between naturalism and symbolism, enabling journalism that is factual, ethical, and emotionally resonant.

3 key takeaways:

🎭 Images act as more than “proof”: they carry symbolic power to communicate complex issues like climate justice, migration, and inequality without overt editorialising.

📸 Climate journalism isn’t just about words - my new paper with Saffron O'Neill shows how images can balance objectivity with powerful storytelling.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Friends at #ICA25! Looking forward to my presentation later today at 3pm on my paper "Transformative Journalism, Quiet Advocacy, and the Seductive Power of Imagery in Digital Climate Niche Journalism" from my PhD research!
Hope to see you there, but if not, reach out for a coffee!
#ICA

This was a really collaborative piece of work with co-author @joshgabbatiss.bsky.social from Carbon Brief and Catherine Butler at @universityofexeter.bsky.social
@c3ds.bsky.social

🎉 New paper! This work has lived as a cool interactive @carbonbrief.org piece here: interactive.carbonbrief.org/how-uk-newsp... since 2021, but is now *finally* also a published academic journal article in Public Understanding of Science: doi.org/10.1177/0963...

Check out @jonathan-growcott.bsky.social's new paper!

It's always exciting to see what others in my PhD cohort are up to - ours is an interdisciplinary program so there's such a range of research going on.

I'm no expert on ecology, but these Loud Leopards seem pretty cool🐆📢

Our updated editorials analysis for 2024...

🚨 Record levels of opposition to climate action in 2024 UK editorials

🚨 This is the third year in a row that opposition levels have increased

Always a pleasure to work with the amazing @carbonbrief.org and @joshgabbatiss.bsky.social on this analysis!

Excited to learn that our poster was chosen as runner up for the poster prize 🥳 Thanks to everyone who voted on our two provocations and to the #AI4NZ conference organisers!
#PosterDesign #SciComm

@drkowert.bsky.social

💚 This has been such a fun project to be a part of, massive thanks to editor Rachel Kowert for involving me and for all the cool work she does around making academic work on pop culture and digital platforms accessible, open, and fun!

🧣 My chapter focuses on the visual communication of Taylor Swift through colours in her lyricism and branding of albums/eras

🔴 I look at how colour and visuals create a "fanilect" - shared visual language among fans

OUT NOW: our book The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: Taylor Swift 🎉

📘 Free PDF and option to purchase paperback both here: works.hcommons.org/records/1wcf...

📷 "There are without doubt vital and profound reasons to criticise AI-generated images. I'm just not sure that the fact they don't look sufficiently like volumetrically-organised photographs or film is one of them"

@profgillian.bsky.social

✏️"To be blunt, both photography and coordinate-based mapping were technologies deployed extensively by European states to expropriate common land, to colonise territories and to categorise people."

@profgillian.bsky.social

on criticising AI-generated images for not looking photographic I’ve just read Roland Meyer’s admirably clear critique in the journal Rrrreflect of the imagery generated by OpenAI’s Sora (Roland has developed an extensive critique of Midjourne…

This is absolutely fascinating from the brilliant @profgillian.bsky.social and couldn't come at a better time as myself and @veronicaawhite.bsky.social are having many conversations with AI experts on Gen-AI imagery in a climate/journalism context

visualmethodculture.wordpress.com/2024/12/16/o...

🖼️ Our poster will be up all day today and the rest of the week in the Forum at @universityofexeter.bsky.social - please pop by and put a sticker on to share your views!

🎤 Great to present our paper "How does Gen-AI see Climate Change?" at the first ever AI for Net Zero Conference on behalf of the great author team!

💡 We were excited to bring some social science to the discussion & have already had great conversations

@veronicaawhite.bsky.social
@c3ds.bsky.social

Our interactive poster is up in the Forum at the first ever AI for Net Zero conference, hosted at @exeter.ac.uk. Come share your views on AI-generated climate imagery!
#AI4NZ @sylviahayes.bsky.social

Please can I be added? I'm a researcher of climate communication!

This was part of a wider ethnographic study of climate visuals in the news...

... please get in touch and stay tuned for future papers from this work, coming soon! 👋
@c3ds.bsky.social @uniofexeternews.bsky.social

We found that images from COP26 were mostly:

👔 "talking heads" politicians
✊ images of protest

🧵 We trace the journey of a news visual from camera to (web)page
🔎 There are many (hidden) sites of power in this journey
📷 This can result in marginalised perspectives, people or movements

Visual Politics, Protest, and Power: Who Shaped the Climate Visual Discourse at COP26? Despite the importance of visual imagery for how people conceptualise issues in the news media, most research on journalism and communication prioritises textual media. This research examines the v...

🎉My new paper with Saffron O'Neill just published:

Visual Politics, Protest, and Power: Who Shaped the Climate Visual Discourse at COP26?
tinyurl.com/bdzm9j4z

Summary report: shorturl.at/JT4xS

We analysed images of COP & spoke to journalists/photographers/editors present

Hi! I'm Sylvia, researcher at University of Exeter (UK) focusing on visual climate change communication 📷🌍

My expertise is in photography, journalism, pub engagement w/ climate change, and visual comms

If you want to say hi or work with me please get in touch! 👋

S.hayes3@exeter.ac.uk