Climate Change Issue Animals Digital Methods Initiative -- Amsterdam -- August Sabine 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 Google News 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 fox sea turtle marmot penguin eagle crane Puffin walrus sources: & whale dolphin panda orangutan elephant frog tiger pika

Technique ‘Scrape’ the engine results of “climate change” and search within results 3 search engines & 3 tools: -- Scrape Google news.google.comnews.google.com -- Scrape Google News -- Scrape Technorati

source:

Findings The polar bear is the top issue animal in the news as well as in the blogosphere The hierarchy among the issue animals is flattened on the Web (google.com)

Technique Search images for “climate change” and count within results for each issue animal 3 search engines & manual counting images.google.com news.google.com 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