Democracy or war? The communication and deliberation of the climate issue online.

Abstract

Licensing:All content in NJSTS is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. This means that anyone is free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) or adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the material as they like, provided they follow two provisions: a) attribution -give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. b) share alike -any remixing, transformation or building upon the material must itself be published under the same license as the original. Towards a more democratic climate science?Some years ago, the internet played a crucial role in the incident that was to become known as 'Climategate'. An archive of around 1,000 e-mails that involved scientists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia was unlawfully made public.The -gate suffix suggests that the e-mail authors were involved in a scientific scandal, and that anthropogenic global warming was a hoax. The online sphere and mainstream press exploded in subsequent controversy. As an example, it was described inThe Telegraph as "The worst scientific scandal of our generation" Second, studies of scientists' discursive strategies in controversies (Gilbert 1984) indicate that scientists tend to close up instead of opening up when controversies rage, and that they use demarcation strategies to discredit critics and resolve controversies (e.g. Burchell 2007, Michael andBirke 1994). This is an obvious challenge if the goal is socially robust knowledge, because trench-style warfare differs in character from deliberative communication.Mobilizing Sunniva Tøsse's vocabulary of openness and control (2013) these insights could suggest that scientists prefer strategies of control when controversies heat up, and that climate scientists are more interested in achieving 'politically robust' communication.This concept was introduced by Tøsse precisely to address some of the problematic issues with respect to the exercise of control over the reception of scientific information in controversial situations.We want to discuss what happens with the strategies of climate scientists and skeptics when the controversy is played out online.Do we find signs of agora-style democratic deliberation that caters for open scientific debates and the production of more socially robust knowledge, or do we rather find that climate scientists and skeptics seek to maintain control over the production and dissemination of factual arguments and withdraw to their own spheres in pursuit of managing the situation?What do we know about how climate change is debated online?Some literature already exists that might illuminate our discussion.Mike Schäfer (2012) has reviewed more than 100 papers that deal with online climate communication from multiple disciplinary perspectives. A key insight from this study was that climate scientists are actually not the main players in online climate communication.However, some scientists do use the internet, and they do ...

Museums and communicating climate change-related issues on Facebook platforms

“…This is notable because a person will need to like or follow the museum’s Facebook page for their posts to appear on their feed, or go out of their way to specifically visit the museum’s Facebook page. This could suggest that some of the comments are from trolls (Skjølsvold et al. , 2015) with the intention of provoking conflicts and arguments online.…”

“…The findings of this study suggest that museums have generally achieved a balance between communicating the impacts of climate change and those related to potential solutions. Nevertheless, while research has shown that what motivates people to take positive action is understanding the causes of climate change and the importance of communicating this (Skjølsvold et al, 2015), there are not considerable postings on the Facebook platforms examined in this study that draw attention to the causes of climate change or postings that explicitly encourage individual and collective reflections and action to address climate challenges.…”

Climate Change Communication in Norway

“…This has produced some noteworthy consequences. Climate scientists have expressed that they began blogging in the mid-2000s, in part because of their frustration with the journalists of the era, whom they considered too concerned with "balanced" coverage, and because of the prospects of reaching a global audience (Skjølsvold, Ryghaug, & Swensen, 2015). Research suggests that the scientific blogging of the era served as a channel to disseminate what the scientists believed to be the "basic facts" of climate science, in relatively technical and difficult prose.…”

Should All Cars Be Electric by 2025? The Electric Car Debate in Europe

“…The Internet or online format privileges certain groups of people and certain ways of talk over others [13]. Thus, participation is never equally accessible to all [14]. Papacharissi [15] has identified three issues related to the capacity of the Internet to improve the democratic exchange of ideas: access to information, the possibility of meeting people with different backgrounds and how the future is connected to the commercialization of this environment.…”