Visual digital intermediaries and global climate communication: Is climate change still a distant problem on YouTube?

PLOS ONE Visual digital intermediaries and global climate communication 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Fig 4. Channels’ content diversification. Value 0 corresponds to the case where all channel types for a given lan- guage contain exactly the same fraction of videos with arctic themes. Value 1 corresponds to the case where only one channel type contains videos with arctic themes. The plot shows the distribution of content diversification over languages. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0318338.g004 findings invite three key reflections about the role of YouTube as global digital intermediary in online climate communication in general, and the persistence of a green ghetto in particular. First, the study confirms that global YouTube Search does not dramatically dissolve a (Global North) green ghetto. To a large extent, the top results sustain the status quo, albeit with some modification. Keywords associated with alternative climate discourses would likely yield different patterns in aggregate, and more varied patterns across contexts. Still, these results bear out at global scale earlier findings about climate communication on English- language YouTube. In this mainstream rendition, it is clear that visual climate repertoires from the mass media era are perpetuated online. The findings underscore the stickiness of the arctic distancing frame as established visual shorthand for climate issues [31,80]. Both old and new climate communicators contribute to its persistence. Climate communication ‘usual suspects’ such as the news media are still

prominent in top results, and continue to perpetuate the arctic distancing frame. Fresh actors in the form of user-led and popular science channels widen the circle, but also sustain the distancing theme. We note that the persistence may at times be less about what is actually depicted and more about other functions. For example, the use of these visual themes may be more about pursuing engaging motifs such as animals to anticipate algorithmic visibility or about borrowing legacy footage and frames modelled on professional media as authoritative actors [78]. Second, YouTube’s platform-side language clusters (as observed through the API) create uneven conditions of visibility for relevance in the form of local channels and content. Top results in the global language clusters consistently present audiences with channels from the PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0318338 April 8, 2025 18/ 23