Political cartoon in the Canarian circuit of exhibition: How to raise awarness about climate change throught an unique journalistic genre

Abstract

The activities of the 21st Tenerife International Comic and Illustration Fair, organized by the Cine+Cómics Foundation and the Moebius Cultural Chair of the University of La Laguna, included the exhibition El cambio climático en viñetas, which had been on display in the Parliament of the Canary Islands from October 10th to November 2nd, 2024. The exhibition was inspired by this exploratory study, which analyses more than 70 press cartoons from 36 Western newspapers, in which different authors address the problem of global warming over the last decade. The methodology applied is the one proposed by Marín-Arrese (2019), where these three steps are followed: interpretation and contextual knowledge; structure and understanding of subtext; and reaction, criticism and persuasion. As a result of this first approach, something unusual in journalism can be seen: the structuring of a narrative that has remained unchanged from 2014 to the present day. It is noteworthy that, over the last ten years, different artists have predicted that humanity’s action on the environment will bring the same consequences and, in addition, they have pointed to the same agents— greedy businessmen, climate change deniers and Donald Trump —as responsible for the current situation. This knowledge transfer action, where the results of a research project have reached the 1,290 visitors of the cultural space, has been reinforced with the inclusion of the exhibition on the Tenerife International Comic and Illustration Fair’s website, making it a timeless and universally accessible resource.