Images of Nature in Online Climate Activism in Germany and Argentina: Science, Affect and Non-Human ‘Everybodies’

This paper analyses the visual digital images of nature shared by climate activists in Germany and Argentina, with a focus on affective nature representations. We show that activist communities in Argentina represent nature in diverse, affective ways while their counterparts in Germany visually present nature less often, while highlighting a scientifically mediated, fact-based representation of global climate change. Our comparative study shows how varying national political and cultural contexts and populist media debates shape the visual representation of human-nature relationships online. We discuss climate activists’ social media constructions of imaginaries for the future of ecological transitioning and North-South solidarity bridging narratives of science, affect, and non-human subjects characters in digital storytelling.