How anthropogenic climate change prevailed: A case study of controversies around global warming on Portuguese Wikipedia

Abstract

Although the Earth’s surface average temperature is rising since 1850 due mostly to anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions, the existence and the attribution of global warming are sometimes disputed outside the peer-reviewed literature. This article investigates whether climate skeptics’ claims are admitted in Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. We carried a case study involving 93 global warming–related articles in Portuguese Wikipedia, analyzing their revision history from the perspective of Actor–Network Theory in two moments (2014 and 2017). We found that while “Aquecimento global” and other highly accessed articles support thoroughly anthropogenic climate change, it was not the case until 2012, long after the question had been settled by scientists; claims disputing the human influence on the climate remain in some articles. The enforcement of Wikipedia policies was crucial to ensure that anthropogenic climate change would prevail and that the collaborative encyclopedia would become a spokesperson for climate science.

High Impact: Wikipedia sources and edit history document two decades of the climate change field

“…Together these comparative findings and the tools behind them show how researchers can use Wikipedia as a trove of open data and knowledge to enrich our understanding of the growth of knowledge and its representation online. Our findings are in line with previous works conducted on Wikipedia and climate change (17–19) as well as other scientific fields with similar methods (9,12). This work, which we associate as a form of “thick big data”, helps underscore how computational and qualitative analyses are not just possible but lucrative, and help go beyond a divide that has long plagued research on Wikipedia.…”

“…Our results reinforce their findings and elaborate on them: After the 2010 restructuring IPCC remained the main reference of ECC article, while being frequently used across the whole corpus (Fig 1B and 1C). After inevitably becoming an unavoidable argument on the talk page, more and more claims were made supported by one or the other of the IPCC reports, which thus became what could be coined an "obligatory passage point" (19,39) for any editor willing to contribute to the article productively and counter denialism with science. This IPCC's prominence highlights how Wikipedia remains in lock step with science in terms of societal attempts at combating denialism.…”

“…Climate change is among the most volatile subjects on Wikipedia (17), and has thus been studied from the perspective of controversy dynamics, in English and Portuguese Wikipedia (17–19). Following years of heated debates that took place mostly in the media, the public consensus around the anthropogenic causes of climate change consolidated, a process that was reflected on Wikipedia, with the controversy appearing to subside from 2010 onwards.…”

“…Recently, tools have been put forward to consolidate research methods focused on using Wikipedia to study contemporary science; specifically the manner it documents the growth of knowledge and facilitates access to research (9). Climate change is among the most volatile subjects on Wikipedia (17), and has thus been studied from the perspective of controversy dynamics, in English and Portuguese Wikipedia (17)(18)(19). Following years of heated debates that took place mostly in the media, the public consensus around the anthropogenic causes of climate change consolidated, a process that was reflected on Wikipedia, with the controversy appearing to subside from 2010 onwards.…”

Characteristics and Evolution of Wikipedia Pages on Climate Change (En, Es and Pt)

“…Existen pocos estudios sobre Wikipedia y el cambio climático. Se identificaron dos estudios de Estevez & Cukierman (2012, 2019. Uno de ellos analiza 15 artículos en portugués relacionados con el cambio climático, sus hallazgos indican que la argumentación de los textos sigue las proposiciones científicas hegemónicas (Estevez & Cukierman, 2012).…”