Living with Solar: Examining Visuals in Newspapers and Social Media About Utility-Scale Solar

The number of large-scale, photovoltaic (PV) solar facilities, also known as solar farms or utility-scale solar (USS) is rapidly increasing in rural America. Rural residents have unique relationships to their land and communities, and they are increasingly using social media as a deliberation and mobilization tool as they voice concern over the visual and environmental impact of solar development on agricultural land. Scholars have observed procedural injustice in rural energy siting practices, locating utility solar development as a perpetuation of urban-rural inequality in the historic siting of energy facilities. From a visual framing and energy justice theoretical framework, this content analysis seeks to better understand the lens from which rural residents are seeing and challenging solar development while comparing their framings to that of dominant media messaging. Media content addressing solar development from January 1–June 30, 2023 from national (The New York Times, Wall Street Journal) and local (The Times of Northwest Indiana) newspapers as well as in five (two national issue-based and three rural Indiana-county-based) anti-utility-solar Facebook groups are analyzed for visual frames. The results show no overlap in dominant frames; the dominant frames of the Facebook groups are ‘sense of place’ and ‘injustice,’ while the dominant frames of the newspapers are ‘technological optimism’ and ‘landscape as energy.’ The Facebook groups visualize utility-scale solar as a problem to be prevented through mobilization, while the newspapers visualize it as a solution to be promoted. Locals were rarely present in the images analyzed in this study. Workers were frequently featured in the newspaper images. No visuals of the first (resource extraction) and last (decommissioning and disposal) stages of the utility-solar energy life cycle were present. To improve public discourse and deliberation regarding utility-scale solar development, I encourage frames of overlap, depictions of the real public, an emplacement approach, and the pursuit of just climate justice in visual framing.