Cartographic content analysis of compelling climate change communication

Abstract

Maps are a key way to communicate climate change. The goal of these maps is to make climate change relatable, tangible, and understandable. However, little research has assessed the content of these maps and the aspects of these maps which attract readers, reduce complexity, and make climate change tangible. One way to evaluate maps of climate change is through the concept of vividness, a term from the communication literature. This article examines the content and vividness of maps of climate change to answer the following: which media organizations publish these maps? What is the design and content of these maps? Did these maps convey climate change vividly? Using content analysis and multidimensional scaling (nMDS) this research showed that producers of climate change maps are often not the publishers of this same content. These maps primarily showed topics which were relevant to audiences in the United States. There was a wide variety of different cartographic designs used. And finally, maps were vivid when they employed the eight aspects of vividness presented in this paper: legend design, symbolization, layout, projections which were appropriate for the data, visual salience, visible change over time, color use which aligned with color connotations, and novel design styles.

An ontology‐based semantic description model of ubiquitous map images

“…The codes used were mainly set from four aspects: map context, data model properties, graphic/visualization properties, and layout properties (Muehlenhaus, 2011b). Fish (2020Fish ( , 2021 The coding schemes in the above research all share three essential categories, namely, map's basic attributes, data, and expression, even though the research purposes are different. But for each category, the coding items and the coding granularity are different.…”

“…The codes used were mainly set from four aspects: map context, data model properties, graphic/visualization properties, and layout properties (Muehlenhaus, 2011b). Fish (2020, 2021) takes the climate change map as examples, and used this method to study the elements of vivid cartography, including visual significance, visible changes over time, consistent color use, projection selection, symbolization, legend design, layout, and novel design. Here, vividness means maps present facts accurately and are persuasive through their ability to connect with map readers' emotions.…”

“…Such volatility inherent in the definition, connotation, and design patterns of maps is evident in UMIs. While research has characterized the changes in map contents and designs in contemporary map-making practices, these efforts have been limited in scopes, focusing on a small range of topics and map sample scale (Fish, 2020(Fish, , 2021Prestby, 2022). UMIs offer a more comprehensive understanding of the volatile nature of maps with diverse sources, large sample scales, and a wide range of map types.…”

“…Consequently, they differ significantly in symbol design, color schemes, map layout, and other map elements. They impose great challenges for machine‐centered tasks such as semantic retrieval (Luft & Schiewe, 2021; Walter et al., 2013), content description and analysis (Degbelo, 2021a; Fish, 2020; Scheider et al., 2014), and information extraction (Tavakkol et al., 2019; Uhl et al., 2018). The main reason lies in the semantic gap between the simple physical form and the complex connotation of UMIs, which impedes their in‐depth applications.…”

Characterizing Storytelling in COVID-19 Cartographic Journalism

“…The conceptualization of vividness has only recently been taken up in cartographic research. Fish [5] uses vividness as a lens to evaluate the power of climate change maps in visual communication. In previous work, other cartographic scholars have studied aspects of vividness including emotion, salience, persuasion, and intimacy.…”