scholarly journals Climate change opinions in online debate sites

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-115
Author(s):  
Adrian Groza ◽  
Pinar Ozturk ◽  
Radu Razvan-Slavescu ◽  
Anca Marginean
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Computational Support ◽  
Textual Entailment ◽  
Argumentative Texts ◽  
Online Debate

Debate sites in social media provide a unified platform for citizens to discuss controversial questions and to put forward their ideas and arguments on the issues of common interest. Opinions of citizens may provide useful knowledge to stakeholders but manual analysis of arguments in debate sites is tedious, while computational support to this end has been rather scarce. We focus here on developing a technical instrumentation for making sense of a set of online arguments and aggregating them into usable results for policy making and climate science communication. Our objectives are: (i) to aggregate arguments posted for a certain debate topic, (ii) to consolidate opinions posted under several but related topics either in the same or different debate site, and (iii) to identify possible linguistic characteristics of the argumentative texts. For the first objective, we propose a voting method based on subjective logic [13]. For the second objective, we assess the semantic similarity between two debate topics based on textual entailment [28]. For the third objective, we employ various existing methods for lexical analysis such as frequency analysis or readability indexes. Although we focused here on the climate change, the method can be applied to any domain.

Science communication and mediatised environmental conflict: A cautionary tale

2021 ◽  
pp. 096366252098513
Author(s):  
Claire Konkes ◽  
Kerrie Foxwell-Norton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Environmental Conflict ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
James Cook ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Tenured Position

When Australian physicist, Peter Ridd, lost his tenured position with James Cook University, he was called a ‘whistleblower’, ‘contrarian academic’ and ‘hero of climate science denial’. In this article, we examine the events surrounding his dismissal to better understand the role of science communication in organised climate change scepticism. We discuss the sophistry of his complaint to locate where and through what processes science communication becomes political communication. We argue that the prominence of scientists and scientific knowledge in debates about climate change locates science, as a social sphere or fifth pillar in Hutchins and Lester’s theory of mediatised environmental conflict. In doing so, we provide a model to better understand how science communication can be deployed during politicised debates.

Climate science and YouTube: deniers, memes, and Trojan horses

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Search Engine ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Educational Video ◽  
Video Content ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World

<p>YouTube is the world's second largest search engine, and serves as a primary source of entertainment for billions of people around the world. Yet while science communication on the website is more popular than ever, discussion of climate science is dominated by - largely scientifically untrained - individuals who are skeptical of the overwhelming scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change is real. Over the past ten years I have built up an extensive audience communicating science - and climate science in particular - on YouTube, attempting to place credible science in the forefront of the discussion. In this talk I will discuss my approach to making content for the website, dissect successful and less successful projects, review feedback from my audience, and break down my process of converting research into entertaining, educational video content.</p>

scholarly journals Source Influence on Journalistic Decisions and News Coverage of Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
News Media ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Public Relations Practitioners ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Information Demand ◽  
Nature Of Information

Across many parts of the globe the relationship between journalists and news sources has been transformed by digital technologies, increased reliance on public relations practitioners, and the rise of citizen journalism. With fewer gatekeepers, and the growing influence of digital and social media, identifying whose voices are authoritative in making sense of complex climate science proves an increasing challenge. An increasing array of news sources are vying for their particular perspective to be established including scientists, government, industry, environmental NGOs, individual citizens and, more recently, celebrities. The boundaries between audience, consumer and producer are less defined and the distinction between ‘factual’ and ‘opinion-based’ reporting has become more blurred. All these developments suggest the need for a more complex account of the myriad influences on journalistic decisions. More research needs to examine behind-the-scenes relations between sources and journalists, and the efforts of news sources to frame the issues or seek to silence news media attention. Also although we now know a great deal more about marginalized sources and their communication strategies we know relatively little about those of powerful multinational corporate organizations, governments and lobby groups. The shifting media environment and the networked nature of information demand a major rethinking of early media-centric approaches to examining journalist/source relations as applied to climate change. The metaphors of ‘network’ and field’ capture the diverse linkages across different spheres better than the Hierarchy of Influences model.

scholarly journals Opinions of 12 to 13-year-olds in Austria and Australia on the worry, cause and imminence of Climate Change

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inez Harker-Schuch ◽  
Frank Mills ◽  
Steven Lade ◽  
Rebecca Colvin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Climate Change Policy ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Age Group ◽  
School Students ◽  
Cultural Worldview ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
Positive Climate

AbstractAlthough we are in the third decade of climate science communication as a discipline, and there is overwhelming scientific consensus and physical evidence for climate change, the general public continues to wrestle with climate change policy and advocacy. Early adolescence (12 to 13 years old) is a critical but under-researched demographic for the formation of attitudes related to climate change. This paper presents opinions on the worry, cause, and imminence of climate change that were collected fromn=463 1styear secondary school students (12-13 years old) in public secondary schools in inner-urban centres in Austria and Australia. Overall, 86.83% of eligible respondents agreed that climate change was probably or definitely something we should worry about, 80.33% agreed that climate change was probably or definitely caused by humans, and 83.17% agreed that climate change was probably or definitely something that was happening now. The respondents’ opinions were also compared to their respective adult population, with Australian 12-13 year olds showing strong positive climate-friendly attitudes, both in comparison to their adult population, and to their Austrian peers. In addition, although the opinions of Austrian 12-13 year olds were quite high, they did not reflect the higher climate-friendly opinions of their adult community. Our results suggest that socio-cultural worldview or socio-cultural cognition theory may not have the influence on this age group as it does on the respective adult population – and, if they are affected, there are attitudes or factors in this age group which resist the opinion-influence from their mature community. These findings are significant as early adolescents may be pivotal in the climate science communication arena and investigating their opinions with regard to climate change may offer an unexplored and under-utilised target for future communication efforts and climate literacy programmes.

scholarly journals Making sense of global warming: Norwegians appropriating knowledge of anthropogenic climate change

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 778-795 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Ryghaug ◽  
Knut Holtan Sørensen ◽  
Robert Næss
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Group Interviews

This paper studies how people reason about and make sense of human-made global warming, based on ten focus group interviews with Norwegian citizens. It shows that the domestication of climate science knowledge was shaped through five sense-making devices: news media coverage of changes in nature, particularly the weather, the coverage of presumed experts’ disagreement about global warming, critical attitudes towards media, observations of political inaction, and considerations with respect to everyday life. These sense-making devices allowed for ambiguous outcomes, and the paper argues four main outcomes with respect to the domestication processes: the acceptors, the tempered acceptors, the uncertain and the sceptics.

scholarly journals From Doubt to Distrust: Reassessing the Partisan Climate Gap

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan Bugden
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Decomposition Analysis ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Environmental Sociology ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
Political Partisanship

Nowhere is the partisan politicization of science more pronounced than on the subject of climate change, with Republican and Democratic voters divided on whether climate change exists and how to address it. Existing research explains the partisan climate gap through a process of manufactured doubt, with a network of corporate and conservative organizations using their considerable resources to deny the reality of climate change and its anthropogenic causes, and to spread denial of climate science among conservative and Republican voters. I argue that this explanation is incomplete and increasingly unable to address the contours of the contemporary partisan climate gap. Building on existing research in science and technology studies, environmental sociology, and political partisanship, I explore an alternative hypothesis for the partisan climate gap: distrust in science. I apply a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis to a large non-probability sample of Democrats and Republicans (n = 1808). Results show that lower levels of trust in science among Republicans explains a larger amount of the partisan climate gap than does climate science denial. Rather than being purely a product of manufactured doubt, contemporary climate partisanship is largely the product of manufactured distrust, reflecting an anti-science conservative movement that predates and extends beyond the climate change countermovement and its efforts to deny climate science. I conclude by discussing how focusing on manufactured distrust, in conjunction with manufactured doubt, can enrich the sociological study of climate change and science communication.

Youth as Climate Change Messengers: A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 814-823
Author(s):  
Jill Hendrickson Lohmeier ◽  
Shanna Rose Thompson ◽  
Robert F. Chen ◽  
Stephen Mishol
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
General Public ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Science Learning ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Science Content ◽  
The Public

Artwork created by children can effectively communicate science content, especially for topics that are of universal concern for the public but may cause apprehension, like climate change. This commentary describes artwork from a youth art contest about climate change in which the winning art was displayed on public buses. Young artists learned about climate science while creating images that adults and youth easily engaged with in public spaces. Thus, we suggest that connecting youth with science through art, and then using youth-generated art to engage the general public in science learning can be an effective vehicle for science communication.

The story of Skeptical Science: How citizen science helped to turn a website into a go-to resource for climate science

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bärbel Winkler ◽  
John Cook
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Massive Open Online Course ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Video Lectures ◽  
Study Team ◽  
Turn Over ◽  
The University

<p>Skeptical Science (SkS) is a website with international reach founded by John Cook in 2007. The main purpose of SkS is to debunk misconceptions and misinformation about human-caused climate change and features a database that currently has more than 200 rebuttals based on peer-reviewed literature. Over the years, SkS has evolved from a one-person operation to a team project with science-minded volunteers from around the globe. The Skeptical Science team also actively contribute to published research, with a highlight being the often cited 97% consensus paper published in 2013 (Cook et al. 2013) for which team members content-analysed about 12,000 abstracts in a study whose publication fee was crowd-funded by readers of the website.</p><p>The SkS author community formed in 2010 in response to the proposal to expand existing rebuttals to three levels: basic, intermediate, and advanced. Since then, team members regularly collaborate to write and review rebuttal and blog articles for the website. Volunteer translators from many countries have translated selected content into more than 20 languages including booklets such as The Debunking Handbook, The Uncertainty Handbook or The Consensus Handbook. In addition to the already mentioned consensus study, team members have helped with other research projects initiated by John Cook such as the efforts to train a computer to detect and classify climate change misinformation. Another significant project is the Massive Open Online Course (or MOOC) “Denial101x: Making Sense of Climate Science Denial” in collaboration with the University of Queensland, for which the SkS team produced numerous video lectures and for which forum moderators were recruited. Outreach activities such as the “97 Hours of Consensus” were crowdsourced with team members collecting and organising content and providing technical support.</p><p>Challenges: Due to the volunteer nature of people’s involvement, there are some challenges involved as not everybody is available to help with tasks all the time. People help as much – or as little – as their time allows and there’s always some turn-over with new people joining while others leave.</p><p>Skeptical Science (SkS): (accessed November 29, 2019)</p><p>Cook, J., Nuccitelli, D., Green, S. A., Richardson, M., Winkler, B., Painting, R., Way, R., Jacobs, P., & Skuce, A. (2013). . <em>Environmental Research Letters</em>, <em>8</em>(2), 024024+.</p><p>Cook, J., Schuennemann, K., Nuccitelli, D., Jacobs, P., Cowtan, K., Green, S., Way, R., Richardson, M., Cawley, G., Mandia, S., Skuce, A., & Bedford, D. (April 2015). Denial101x: Making Sense of Climate Science Denial. <em>edX</em>. </p><p>Cook, J., & Lewandowsky, S. (2011). . St. Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland. ISBN 978-0-646-56812-6.</p>

Using an interdisciplinary MOOC to teach climate science and science communication to a global classroom

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bärbel Winkler ◽  
John Cook
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Scientific Content ◽  
Course Content ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Video Lectures ◽  
The University

<p>MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are a powerful educational tool, making scientific content available to a large and diverse audience. The MOOC “Making Sense of Climate Science Denial” applies science communication principles derived from cognitive psychology and misconception-based learning in the design of video lectures covering many aspects of climate change. As well as teaching fundamental climate science, the course also presents psychological and critical thinking research into climate science denial, teaching students the most effective techniques for responding to misinformation. A number of the enrolled “students" have been secondary and tertiary educators, who have adopted the course content in their own classes as well as adapted their teaching techniques based on the science communication principles presented in the lectures. The MOOC—developed by John Cook while at the University of Queensland's Global Change Insitute—integrates cognitive psychology, educational research and climate science in an interdisciplinary online course that has had over 40,000 enrolments from over 180 countries since the MOOC was launched in 2015.</p>

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