Staff

Sylvia Hayes
PhD Student
Amory
Amory Building, University of Exeter, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX4 4RJ , UK
Overview
Following my First Class BA Geography degree from the University of Exeter, I was fortunate enough to receive South West Doctoral Training Partnership funding to continue research in this area through both an MRes and PhD.
My MRes research investigated the role of image banks (particularly Getty Images) in constructing a visual discourse of climate change in the media. This MRes inspired a recently published paper analysing the media coverage of climate change protests in 2019/2020.
You can hear me talking about this research on climate change protest in a recent BBC podcast.
My PhD research aims to investigate how digital-born news organisations viusally communicate climate change information, and how this information is affected and spread by social media and algorithmic influences. I am currently undertaking a SWDTP-funded placement with award-winning digital climate news organisation Carbon Brief and am grateful for their support in my reserach.
I am delighted to be working with the excellent supervision team of Saffron O’Neill (University of Exeter), Catherine Butler (University of Exeter), and Lorraine Whitmarsh (University of Bath).
Broad research specialisms
Climate change communication, digital media, visual climate communication, social media
Qualifications
BA Geography – University of Exeter
MRes Sustainable Futures – University of Exeter
Links
Research
Research interests
Climate change communication, digital-born media, visual climate communication, social media
Research projects
I am currently working on several projects alongside my PhD work:
- A study on public responses to images of climate protest, inspired by my recent article on the media representations of climate protesters. This is a project I am running with Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh and the University of Bath, as well as Undergraduate Research Assistant Yu Shuang Gan
- Visual Reporting of Heatwaves: working with Associate Professor Saffron O'Neill to lead a group of European scholars to analyse visual coverage of the 2019 heatwave across Europe. More information on this project here.
- Analysed UK newspaper editorials between 2011-2021 for pro/anti climate action sentiment. This analysis was undertaken with and for Carbon Brief.
Publications
Key publications | Publications by category | Publications by year
Publications by category
Journal articles
Publications by year
2021
Sylvia_Hayes Details from cache as at 2022-08-08 12:44:53