Abstract
We study the discursive resonance of online climate skepticism in traditional media in Germany, a country where climate skeptics lack public prestige and thus form a political counter-movement. We thereby differentiate two temporal dynamics: resonance can be continuous or selective, based on the exploitation of specific events. Beyond, we test whether such resonance is higher within the conservative media. We rely on news value theory to shed light on the mechanism facilitating or hindering such resonance and identify three indicators for resonance: frames, positions and actors. Using various computational methods as well as qualitative case studies, we examine the skeptical and traditional media discourses over a period of two years. Our analysis shows that there is no continuous resonance. However, our data reveal selective resonance: skeptics’ manage to exploit specific events pushing their frames and positions onto traditional media’s agenda. Thereby, conservative media did not give greater resonance to climate skeptical voices whereas they resort to downplaying the issue by allocating less space to it.
Highlights
Anthropogenic climate change is one of the most fundamental problems the world is facing, and it presents a threat to the global community [1]
We examined how different venues—the online venue of climate change skeptics and the mainstream discourse—resonate
Given that counter-movements are by definition oriented towards the mainstream of political debates [8], this paper has investigated the opposite relationship, more challenging from the point of view of democratic theory: do the online counter-movements of climate skeptics resonate in traditional media? We have studied three
Summary
Anthropogenic climate change is one of the most fundamental problems the world is facing, and it presents a threat to the global community [1]. There is scientific consensus that climate change is occurring, that the rise in temperature is predominantly due to human activity, that it has severe consequences for ecological systems, and that only a sharp reduction in CO2 emissions can limit climate change, political efforts have been lacking. One reason for the impasse is the counter-mobilization of climate skeptics [2], who have run campaigns that cast doubt on the scientific consensus and those responsible for it—the climate scientists. Climate skeptics and their spokespersons in the media and politics have been stunningly successful in the US, where conservative citizens forcefully reject climate politics [3] and the Trump administration.
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