Seeing Beyond Crisis: Analyzing Photographs and Photographer Bylines in Solutions-Oriented Environmental Journalism Stories

Environmental journalism helps readers better understand the relationship between humanity and humanity’s home, but visual aspects of this type of reporting often focus more on conflict and distant human suffering. Though this is somewhat changing in print media, there remains a lack of focus on the action-forward type of reporting that might mobilize and educate readers toward what can be done about environmental problems. This study looks at environmental journalism visuals through a solutions journalism perspective, which compels journalists to add to their coverage of problems by asking and showing what people are doing about it. Through a content analysis, we explore how the environment is visually represented in solutions-oriented news stories. We found key differences based on story topic, as well as how people were included and depicted within the images. We also discuss the significant reliance on outside sources for images used in these stories.