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Media image analysis focusing on the 2019 European heatwaves finds that the visuals appearing in news media typically show people having “fun in the sun”, across the UK, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. People were often depicted as enjoying the hot weather, whether that was sunbathing on beaches, or playing in water. When images did show the dangers of heat extremes, people were generally absent, distant or silhouetted.
The authors highlight that these are generally problematic ways of depicting the serious nature of heatwaves, as they can undermine the severity of heat risks, remove the human element, and marginalise the experiences of those who are particularly vulnerable.
Commenting on the work for the Academy of Social Sciences, research lead Prof Saffron O’Neill points out the dissonance between the content and images across the news stories:
“In all four countries, we found examples of news headlines and image captions talking about the unprecedented heat, vulnerable people and even deaths alongside these sorts of fun-in-the-sun ‘holiday snaps’.”
“The dominance of these two visual framings of extreme heat (‘fun in the sun’ and ‘idea of heat’) displace concerns of vulnerability. In ‘fun in the sun’, no-one is at risk – heatwaves are something to be enjoyed and celebrated.”
“People who are most vulnerable to extreme heat events – young children, older people, those with pre-existing health conditions or people living in poor quality housing – do not feature in the images at all; the risks extreme heat poses to their health and wellbeing is not even acknowledged.”
Commentary & Analysis
13th August 2026
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