Fear, Climate Change, and the Antichrist: Moral Shocks and the Visual Politics of Polarization Online

Scholars working on connective action have highlighted the affective dynamics and the polarizing power of digital storytelling. Yet the visual dimension of connective action on climate change and its polarizing power have been less studied. This paper fills this gap by analyzing polarization of visual narratives surrounding climate change in the United Nations Climate Change Conference of 2021, COP26. We present a qualitative analysis of big data samples that utilized computational analysis methods to collect images and accompanying text from Twitter using the hashtag of the conference. The analysis considers the emotions that the images explicitly denote or elicit and the affective connotations that they infuse into political dissidence surrounding climate change. We find that, while many of the images shared by institutional actors promoting action for climate change depict harmonious images of nature and technology, counter-movement actors create shocking images with references to history, apocalyptic figures like the Antichrist, current political actors and deep-state conspiracy theories. Text and images evoke feelings of danger and disgust through grotesque imagery accompanied with bright colors. Despite these appeals to elicit moral shocks in the viewer, the images these actors share retain an interest in utilizing visual markers of objective evidence such using elements of new media in their design or historical images. The paper makes a contribution by showing the relevance of visual content to understand political polarization in digital arenas.