Green Populism and Visual Culture

Visuals play a significant role in populism and environmentalism. Due to the political, cultural, and semiotic makeup, certain images have become trendier than others. Social media has transferred the power from the hands of media houses to the public in determining an image’s popularity. The constructed images of the perpetrators are manufactured, distributed, and perceived within the unpredictable world of the Internet. Yet media monopolization by high-income countries and the digital divide among low-income countries created stereotypes and cliches in climate visual culture. Climate crisis visualization and political action have become inseparable in the era of climate emergency. The diplomatic narratives of responsibility reflect the unaccountability of elite perpetrators and the under-representations of suffering common people, indicating a significant characteristic of green populism. Despite the “pseudo-democratic political style” of populism, scholars have investigated how populism can benefit conservation efforts globally – a situation unique to eco-populism. However, since populism constructs the “sufferers” and the sufferers do not have a say in defining the “perpetrators,” there are marginalization, exclusion, and bias in this narrative, as evidenced in the visual culture. The distinction between natural disasters and climate crises blurred depending upon the storyteller, while remnants of colonialism and racism created biases based on skin and fur color. To ensure inclusivity and fairness, it is necessary to relook at the visual culture of green populism.