Coalitions and counter-coalitions in online contestation: An analysis of the German and British climate change debate

Abstract

We seek to understand the role of the Internet in policy monopolies characterized by a dominant coalition in traditional political venues. In these settings, we identify coalitions and counter-coalitions on the Web and ask how these coalitions differ resource-wise and where these differences come from. To do so, we combine link tracing and quantitative content analysis in the field of climate change in Germany and the United Kingdom. Our results show that online contestation is indeed structured by competing coalitions of climate advocates and skeptics. Moreover, the counter-coalitions of climate skeptics turn out to be the true winners of online communication: they have not only incorporated conservative media as their allies, but also managed to make themselves more visible than climate advocates. This visibility stems from their own link setting activity, which makes climate advocates’ passive online strategy of just ignoring the skeptical camp ineffective.

How climate change skeptics (try to) spread their ideas: Using computational methods to assess the resonance among skeptics’ and legacy media

“…While climate skepticism has been characterized as a counter-movement [2,25,26]-or counter-coalition [11] based on its counter-status to scientific results [27]-the political status of climate skeptics varies greatly between countries. They are far from being a minority in the US, which has been cited as a country where climate change denial has progressed to a point of becoming the official presidential doctrine; but other countries such as Norway or Australia also show strong forms of climate skepticism (e.g., [6,20]).…”

“…While some research focused on appearances of skeptics in traditional media (often in comparison to the US; e.g., [5,16,[31][32][33]), only few studies analyzed the presence of climate change skeptics in parliamentary arenas [4]. Other research has focused on skeptics' online communication in these countries [9,11,12,31]. Yet, to our knowledge, research has failed to study how separated the political counter-movement still is or whether we can observe discursive resonance between counter-movements debates (mostly conducted online) and mainstream discourses.…”

“…Such counter-movements, however, use another venue, the Internet, to push their ideas [9]. Here, climate skeptics are more active and visible compared to climate advocates in European countries, building connections with conservative media and transnational allies [10,11], and even imposing their frames onto the agenda of climate advocates [12]. Yet, so far, research has hardly analyzed (for an exception, see [13]) whether there is any connection between climate skeptical online communication and the coverage in traditional media and politics (for this research deficit, see [11,14]).…”

“…Here, climate skeptics are more active and visible compared to climate advocates in European countries, building connections with conservative media and transnational allies [10,11], and even imposing their frames onto the agenda of climate advocates [12]. Yet, so far, research has hardly analyzed (for an exception, see [13]) whether there is any connection between climate skeptical online communication and the coverage in traditional media and politics (for this research deficit, see [11,14]). The neglect of studying discursive resonance among venues is all the more surprising as research for the US convincingly shows that the discourse in the traditional channels influences public perceptions [3]: polarized media discourses lead to polarized public perceptions.…”

“…This study seeks to make three contributions. First, our study connects venues that have mostly been examined separately, as research has focused either on climate skeptics' online communication (e.g., [10,11,14]; for a summary, see [9]), or on their visibility in traditional media (e.g., [5,[15][16][17]), or on their strength in parliamentary settings (e.g., [4,18]). By comparing the discourses across venues, we contribute to a better understanding of the conditions that lead to greater resonance of counter-movement ideas in mainstream discourses.…”