The Nature of Time: How the Covers of the World's Most Widely Read Weekly News Magazine Visualize Environmental Affairs

Abstract

Scholars of environmental communication acknowledge the importance of visual representations in shaping perceptions and actions in relation to environmental affairs. Unlike with other media, including newspapers, television and film, research on the visualization of nature and environmental issues in magazines is rare. This study focuses on the covers of Time magazine, one of the world's most influential news weeklies. A dataset that includes all relevant covers from 1923 to 2011 is examined using a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis to analyze the visual representation of nature and environmental issues. The results show that the presence of environmental issues and nature on the covers has increased over the decades. Furthermore, Time takes an advocacy position on some environmental issues, but it is a shallow one that is weakly argued through less-than-engaging imagery and fails to offer much in the way of solutions or agency to the reader.

Keywords:

• Representation
• Environmental Issues
• Nature
• Time Magazine
• Visual Communication
• Content Analysis

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark S. Meisner

Mark S. Meisner is the Executive Director of the International Environmental Communication Association (IECA) and a visiting scholar at the Center for Environmental Policy and Administration at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University

Bruno Takahashi

Bruno Takahashi is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Department of Communication at Michigan State University