Making Climate Change Tangible in Augmented Reality Media: Hello My Black Balloon

Abstract

This research insight paper considers how augmented reality (AR) can be used in climate change communication from an organizational perspective. Its reported case study finds AR media helped configure a novel advocacy position for the commissioning organization in situ, as well as providing opportunity to make data meaningful and tangible for audiences. It reflects on how AR localizes and spatializes data in new ways by drawing on current literatures and commercial examples of AR climate communications and investigating the organizational imperatives and learnings from using AR for public advocacy messaging. Our conclusions suggest AR mediates new relations between the physical environment and computational data–making climate change visible and knowable in ways that were previously inaccessible to the public and policy actors.