scholarly journals Public Engagement in Climate Communication on China’s Weibo: Network Structure and Information Flows

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yixi Yang ◽  
Mark C. J. Stoddart
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Communication Networks ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Information Diffusion ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Information Flows ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
The Public

This article provides an empirical study of public engagement with climate change discourse in China by analysing how Chinese publics participate in the public discussion around two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and how individual users interact with state and elite actors on the pre-eminent Chinese microblogging platform Weibo. Using social network analysis methods and a temporal comparison, we examine the structure of climate communication networks, the direction of information flows among multiple types of Weibo users, and the changes in information diffusion patterns between the pre- and post-Paris periods. Our results show there is an increasing yet constrained form of public engagement in climate communication on Weibo alongside China’s pro-environmental transition in recent years. We find an expansion of public engagement as shown by individual users’ increasing influence in communication networks and the diversification of frames associated with climate change discourse. However, we also find three restrictive interaction tendencies that limit Weibo’s potential to facilitate multi-directional communication and open public deliberation of climate change, including the decline of mutually balanced dialogic interactions, the lack of bottom-up information flows, and the reinforcement of homophily tendencies amongst eco-insiders and governmental users. These findings highlight the coexistence of both opportunities and constraints of Weibo being a venue for public engagement with climate communication and as a forum for a new climate politics and citizen participation in China.

scholarly journals The Evolution of Communicating the Uncertainty of Climate Change to Policymakers: A Study of IPCC Synthesis Reports

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2466
Author(s):  
Tomas Molina ◽  
Ernest Abadal
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
The Public ◽  
Level Of Confidence ◽  
Ipcc Report ◽  
Degree Of Certainty ◽  
History Of ◽  
Tackle Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on climate change have served to alert both the public and policymakers about the scope of the predicted changes and the effects they would have on natural and economic systems. The first IPCC report was published in 1990, since which time a further four have been produced. The aim of this study was to conduct a content analysis of the IPCC Summaries for Policymakers in order to determine the degree of certainty associated with the statements they contain. For each of the reports we analyzed all statements containing expressions indicating the corresponding level of confidence. The aggregated results show a shift over time towards higher certainty levels, implying a “Call to action” (from 32.8% of statements in IPCC2 to 70.2% in IPCC5). With regard to the international agreements drawn up to tackle climate change, the growing level of confidence expressed in the IPCC Summaries for Policymakers reports might have been a relevant factor in the history of decision making.

Communicating Climate Change across Workplace and Organizational Settings

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Dixon ◽  
Yanni Ma
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Climate Change Communication ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Change Communication ◽  
Reduce Emissions

Addressing climate change requires attention to a variety of communication contexts. While attention has been paid to top-down approaches aimed at individual-level behavior and the beliefs of the public at large, organizations in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors are increasingly recognized as integral players in solving the climate change challenges that we face today. For instance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) characterize the commercial sector as having the highest potential to reduce emissions by 2020, suggesting that meaningful actions aimed at climate change mitigation must come from within organizations. However, the diverse nature of organizational communication poses challenges toward effective climate change communication. On the one hand, climate change communication can occur within organizations, where members’ individual behaviors and beliefs can have a significant impact on an organization’s energy consumption. On the other hand, organizations can communicate environmental issues directly to stakeholders and the public at large—though communication can be complicated by the fact that some organizations benefit from instilling doubt in the science of climate change. The complex nature of organizational-based climate change communication allows members of the for-profit and nonprofit sectors to play an important role in cultivating divergent views of climate change. Future research can help promulgate climate change-related awareness and action within organizational contexts.

scholarly journals New Trouble For Deliberative Democracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
Robert Talisse
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Democratic Practice

In the past two decades, democratic political practice has taken a deliberative turn. That is, contemporary democratic politics has become increasingly focused on facilitating citizen participation in the public exchange of reasons. Although the deliberative turn in democratic practice is in several respects welcome, the technological and communicative advances that have facilitated it also make possible new kinds of deliberative democratic pathology. This essay calls attention to and examines new epistemological troubles for public deliberation enacted under contemporary conditions. Drawing from a lesson offered by Lyn Sanders two decades ago, the paper raises the concern that the deliberative turn in democratic practice has counter-democratic effects.

Bourdieu and the IPCC’s Symbolic Power

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 85-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Climate Skepticism ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Assessment Activities

This article introduces Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of field, interest, and symbolic power into the study of global environmental politics, for the purpose of positioning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) within the international field of climate politics. Revisiting historical accounts of the IPCC’s establishment, the article explores the IPCC’s role in generating international interest in climate change and the field of forces and struggles that has emerged around the organization and its assessment activities as a result. The IPCC continues to hold a central position within the climate field because of its symbolic power to construct the meaning of climate change. This makes the organization, its assessment activities, and the knowledge it produces central objects of struggle within the climate field, and the forces that this contestation produces structure all aspects of the IPCC and its work. The article identifies how developing-country attitudes, climate skepticism, and bandwagoning impact the IPCC’s place in climate politics and its assessments of the climate problem.

scholarly journals The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Guardian of Climate Science

2020 ◽  
pp. 295-321
Author(s):  
Eric Paglia ◽  
Charles Parker
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Authority ◽  
Science And Politics

AbstractThis chapter analyzes the evolution of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from a specialist organization of climate scientists into an institution at the nexus of science and politics. We explain how the IPCC became the primary scientific authority for policymakers, the public, and climate activists on the existence, severity, consequences of, and, increasingly, possible solutions to anthropogenic climate change. We assess its influence on policymakers and governments, while examining the various tensions, critiques, and contradictions that the organization and its leaders have had to grapple with across its 32-year history, during which it successfully developed a distinct identity as a trusted provider of comprehensive scientific assessments. Our analysis also focuses on the institutional reforms that helped restore legitimacy to IPCC after ‘climategate’ and other controversies.

The effects of social identity threat and social identity affirmation on laypersons’ perception of scientists

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (7) ◽  
pp. 754-770 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Nauroth ◽  
Mario Gollwitzer ◽  
Henrik Kozuchowski ◽  
Jens Bender ◽  
Tobias Rothmund
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Identity Threat ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Identity Threat ◽  
Public Engagement With Science ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Social Identity Approach

Public debates about socio-scientific issues (e.g. climate change or violent video games) are often accompanied by attacks on the reputation of the involved scientists. Drawing on the social identity approach, we report a minimal group experiment investigating the conditions under which scientists are perceived as non-prototypical, non-reputable, and incompetent. Results show that in-group affirming and threatening scientific findings (compared to a control condition) both alter laypersons’ evaluations of the study: in-group affirming findings lead to more positive and in-group threatening findings to more negative evaluations. However, only in-group threatening findings alter laypersons’ perceptions of the scientists who published the study: scientists were perceived as less prototypical, less reputable, and less competent when their research results imply a threat to participants’ social identity compared to a non-threat condition. Our findings add to the literature on science reception research and have implications for understanding the public engagement with science.

Climate change and global risk

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Frame ◽  
Myles R. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Temperature Response ◽  
Scientific Uncertainty ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Global Risk ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Discussion ◽  
Global Mean Temperature ◽  
History Of

Climate change is among the most talked about and investigated global risks. No other environmental issue receives quite as much attention in the popular press, even though the impacts of pandemics and asteroid strikes, for instance, may be much more severe. Since the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 1990, significant progress has been made in terms of (1) establishing the reality of anthropogenic climate change and (2) understanding enough about the scale of the problem to establish that it warrants a public policy response. However, considerable scientific uncertainty remains. In particular scientists have been unable to narrow the range of the uncertainty in the global mean temperature response to a doubling of carbon dioxide from pre-industrial levels, although we do have a better understanding of why this is the case. Advances in science have, in some ways, made us more uncertain, or at least aware of the uncertainties generated by previously unexamined processes. To a considerable extent these new processes, as well as familiar processes that will be stressed in new ways by the speed of twentyfirst century climate change, underpin recent heightened concerns about the possibility of catastrophic climate change. Discussion of ‘tipping points’ in the Earth system (for instance Kemp, 2005; Lenton, 2007) has raised awareness of the possibility that climate change might be considerably worse than we have previously thought, and that some of the worst impacts might be triggered well before they come to pass, essentially suggesting the alarming image of the current generation having lit the very long, slow-burning fuse on a climate bomb that will cause great devastation to future generations. Possible mechanisms through which such catastrophes could play out have been developed by scientists in the last 15 years, as a natural output of increased scientific interest in Earth system science and, in particular, further investigation of the deep history of climate. Although scientific discussion of such possibilities has usually been characteristically guarded and responsible, the same probably cannot be said for the public debate around such notions.

Moral Reasoning, Intuitions, and Perceptions of Climate Change

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ezra Markowitz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Moral Issue ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Technical Issue ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Climate Change Research ◽  
The Public

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. Please check back later for the full article. Climate change is often perceived by individuals as a scientific, environmental, economic and/or technical issue. Until recently, the moral and ethical dimensions of the issue have appeared to resonate less strongly with many members of the public. Yet for over two decades, climate ethicists and others have argued strenuously that climate change is, perhaps at its core, a moral and ethical issue. What explains this apparent disconnect between normative and subjective perspectives on the moral core of climate change? Research has identified a set of key psychological and cultural mechanisms that influence and at times inhibit individual moral reasoning about climate change and, often, inhibit perceptions of climate change as a moral issue. Moral reasoning and intuitions about climate change in turn influence public engagement with and support for responses to the problem. The research to date suggests several new questions for scholars to examine further, and it offers implications for effective public communication and engagement.

The Role of Science in Climate Change Lawmaking

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Scientific Organization ◽  
Assessment Process ◽  
Scientific Uncertainty ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Climate Change Negotiations ◽  
The Public ◽  
International Climate ◽  
International Climate Change

This chapter examines how international legal institutions foster cooperation in the presence of scientific uncertainty, especially in the area of international climate change law. It analyses the theory of epistemic institutions and applies it to the primary international scientific organization working on climate change issues, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC’s assessment reports play a major role in setting the terms of the public debate about climate change negotiations that takes place within the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Although independent of the UNFCCC, the IPCC’s work product is thus a key input into the UNFCCC’s efforts to negotiate international climate change rules. However, the IPCC’s credibility has been called into question due to a relative lack of participation by scientists from developing countries in the assessment process.

scholarly journals Most Americans Want to Learn More about Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Vol 98 (6) ◽  
pp. 1103-1107 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Perkins ◽  
Ed Maibach ◽  
Ned Gardiner ◽  
Joe Witte ◽  
Bud Ward ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
Educational Models ◽  
The Public ◽  
American Meteorological Society

Abstract As American Meteorological Society (AMS) members who study Americans’ understanding of climate change and who are engaged in programs to educate Americans about climate change, we want our AMS colleagues to realize their key role in public education. In this article we make the case that 1) AMS members are well positioned to play important leadership roles in educational outreach on climate change, 2) the public wants to learn more about climate change, 3) there is a need for more effective public engagement efforts, and 4) we have successful outreach and educational models that we can start using today.

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