Word Diffusion and Climate Science

R Alexander Bentley,Philip Garnett,Michael J O'Brien,William A Brock

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0047966

R Alexander Bentley, Philip Garnett + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0047966

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Abstract

As public and political debates often demonstrate, a substantial disjoint can exist between the findings of science and the impact it has on the public. Using climate-change science as a case example, we reconsider the role of scientists in the information-dissemination process, our hypothesis being that important keywords used in climate science follow “boom and bust” fashion cycles in public usage. Representing this public usage through extraordinary new data on word frequencies in books published up to the year 2008, we show that a classic two-parameter social-diffusion model closely fits the comings and goings of many keywords over generational or longer time scales. We suggest that the fashions of word usage contributes an empirical, possibly regular, correlate to the impact of climate science on society.

Highlights

For over a decade, leading scientific organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the American Geophysical Union, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and the American Meteorological Society have sent clear signals that Earth’s climate is warming and that the changes are in large part the result of anthropic activities
There are substantial issues concerning the public trust in science [3,4], as well as a widely held perception that climate change is only a distant threat [5], probably the underlying reason has to do with poor communication [6,7] and ‘‘the role of language in conveying climate change issues to stakeholders’’ [8]
Modeling language fashions in climate science We aim to investigate general usage of climate-science vocabulary through the new ‘‘Ngram’’ database [15], which at present scans through over five million books published in seven languages since the 1500s, Google recommends using data after 1800 for quantitative analysis

Summary

Introduction

For over a decade, leading scientific organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the American Geophysical Union, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and the American Meteorological Society have sent clear signals that Earth’s climate is warming and that the changes are in large part the result of anthropic activities. There are substantial issues concerning the public trust in science [3,4], as well as a widely held perception that climate change is only a distant threat [5], probably the underlying reason has to do with poor communication [6,7] and ‘‘the role of language (metaphors, words, strategies, frames and narratives) in conveying climate change issues to stakeholders’’ [8] Some of this concern focuses on journalists, whose regular use of terms such as ‘‘global warming’’ might be perceived as biased, whereas another concern focuses on climate scientists and specialized jargon that fails to convey key concepts [9]. Policymakers are shifting from traditional information campaigns toward a more flexible ability to respond to these movements or at least trying to ‘‘nudge’’ them in certain directions [11]

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