BGHS

How do we proceed?

Using methods developed in video-ethnographic field research, the Climate Worlds research team will investigate local climate issues in various coastal regions of the world and link them to the central framework of "rising sea levels" which has been formulated in connection with global warming and earth system scenarios and has been distributed by the mass media to a global audience. Spread over the continents, these studies together will form a teleidoscope, in which a central topos of climate discourse is refracted in a great number of local interpretations.

Media play a central role in the construction and distribution of (visual) knowledge about climate change as a global phenomenon. Local production and reception processes, which give insight into the idiosyncrasies of the respective media cultures, are therefore of as much interest to researchers as the question whether and how elements of (global) climate discourses in the media are taken up and interpreted with regard to their perception and everyday life at the local level. Media are constitutive not only of the object of research, they are also of course an indispensible tool for practical research by a team dispersed around the globe.

The concept of a globally designed collaborative video-ethnography is innovative and unique to date. A group of five junior researchers, based in various coastal areas (Japan, Cape Verde, the Netherlands, USA, Canada), are conducting a field research programme of about twenty months. In accordance with ethnographic field research methods the researchers on the spot will keep blogs in which they enter their observations, thoughts and findings. These (visual) impressions will be made available to all members of the research team via video blogging and they will also be the basis of the exchange of information and discussion among the team as well as for the public. In cooperation with Dr Tink Diaz, who will look after the project's cinematographic aspects, the project's results will be published using a multi-media format that will also appeal to the general public. In this way, Climate Worlds will both make a direct contribution to "intercultural" (media) education and constitute an experiment in the digital communication of scientific results and of knowledge.