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 Global North (with Portuguese as a key exception). They focus geographically disparate audi- ences — be they in Canada, Cameroon, and Haiti, or in Angola, Mozambique and Portugal — on renditions of the issue primarily sourced in one place, such as, respectively, France or Brazil. What audiences make of this is less clear. This study cannot discern the resonance, in part because the engagement metrics data for each video is only given in its global form. It is possible that high engagement in one audience obscures the lack of it in another, or that geographically remote channels are still experienced as relevant due to shared historical or media hub connections. Another possibility is that no matter the starting point, the arrange- ments inadvertently create new publics for old visual repertoires, as they are reinterpreted and incorporated into local repertoires, possibly with critical overtures [81]. More contextualising approaches that can consider for example full video sequences and comments are needed to sort such questions out. Finally, it is crucial to address how global platforms operate in different contexts. The find- ings underscore the need to attend to differences not only across platforms, but also within them. Studies of online climate communication typically build on the US context and/or English-language data, and the external validity is often assumed. Yet, this can be misleading. In this case, there were clear continuities between global YouTube Search contexts, but also

significant exceptions. For example, US/English YouTube was close to the norm and to other contexts such as India/English. However, it was far from the profile of other language groups with sizeable audiences, such as Hindi and Portuguese. Being too quick to assume one size fits all risks overlooking local narratives [54], and ascribing local circumstances too broadly. In order to understand the role of digital intermediaries in online climate communication, we need to think beyond the notion that global digital intermediaries have only one face. Supporting information SI1. Supplementary material. This document provides coding schemes for channels and visual themes, the definition of the measures used in this article, and additional summaries of top-ranked API query results. (PDF) Author contributions Conceptualization: Alexandra Segerberg, Matteo Magnani. Data curation: Alexandra Segerberg, Matteo Magnani. Formal analysis: Alexandra Segerberg, Matteo Magnani. Funding acquisition: Alexandra Segerberg, Matteo Magnani. Investigation: Alexandra Segerberg, Matteo Magnani. Methodology: Alexandra Segerberg, Matteo Magnani. Project administration: Alexandra Segerberg, Matteo Magnani. Resources: Alexandra Segerberg, Matteo Magnani. Software: Matteo Magnani. Validation: Alexandra Segerberg, Matteo Magnani. Visualization: Alexandra Segerberg, Matteo Magnani. PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0318338 April 8, 2025 19/ 23