Abstract

How can theories of affect and felt emotions be useful in studying the
communication of environmental crises? Beginning from tears spilt over
a graph of transgressed planetary boundaries published in an academic
paper, this article explores the presentation in graphic visual forms of
affective imagery and a growing sophistication amongst scientists,
policymakers and activist communicators in the visualization of
information, data and stories employed to carry the often difficult and
complex messages of current earth systems crises. Critically, this article
attends to the “emotion work” of such images. Taking a lead from
cultural sociology and attempting to elucidate the relationship between
societies under pressure and its choice of texts, this article considers the
environmental documentary Cowspiracy [Anderson, K., & Kuhn, K. (2014).
Cowspiracy. San Francisco, CA: AUM Films & First Spark Media.] to ask
questions of affect’s relation to expressions of the earth systems crisis,
which is also a crisis of culture.