Public Understanding of Science

Climate change has become a pressing environmental concern for scientists, social commentators and politicians. Previous social science research has explored media representations of climate change in various temporal and geographical contexts. Through the lens of Social Representations Theory, this article provides a detailed qualitative thematic analysis of media representations of climate change in the 1988 British broadsheet press, given that this year constitutes an important juncture in this transition of climate change from the domain of science to that of the socio-political sphere. The following themes are outlined: (i) “Climate change: a multi-faceted threat”; (ii) “Collectivisation of threat”; (iii) “Climate change and the attribution of blame”; and (iv) “Speculative solutions to a complex socio-environmental problem.” The article provides detailed empirical insights into the “starting-point” for present-day disputes concerning climate change and lays the theoretical foundations for tracking the continuities and discontinuities characterising social representations of climate change in the future.

Previous research has sought to explain public perception of climate change science in terms of individuals’ “prior commitment” to such ideological stances as just-world belief, system justification, and liberalism/conservatism. One type of prior commitment that has received little formal attention in the literature is narratives of the moral trajectory of society. A theory of climate science uptake based on beliefs in societal progress or decline is more easily portable to non-Western settings; in a case study of global warming attitudes in the Marshall Islands, trajectory narratives indeed account for public belief, concern, blame, and response more aptly than existing theories, and accord well with qualitative analysis of Marshallese climate change discourse. In Western settings, progress/decline narratives may explain much of the variation in climate change attitudes previously accounted for by other ideological variables, promising a more penetrating explanation for the divergence of climate change attitudes within and between societies.

In late 2009, a series of e-mails related to climate research were made public following the hacking into a server and the e-mail accounts of researchers at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. According to some skeptics of climate change research, the content of those e-mails suggested data were being manipulated, while climate scientists said their words were taken out of context. The news coverage of this scandal provides an opportunity to consider media framing. This study has two aims: to extend previous research using a cluster analysis technique to discern frames in media texts; and to provide insight into newspaper coverage of the scandal, which is often referred to as “Climategate.” This study examines the frames present in two British and two American newspapers’ coverage of the issue.

Disagreement within the global science community about the certainty and causes of climate change has led the general public to question what to believe and whom to trust on matters related to this issue. This paper reports on qualitative research undertaken with Australian residents from two rural areas to explore their perceptions of climate change and trust in information providers. While overall, residents tended to agree that climate change is a reality, perceptions varied in terms of its causes and how best to address it. Politicians, government, and the media were described as untrustworthy sources of information about climate change, with independent scientists being the most trusted. The vested interests of information providers appeared to be a key reason for their distrust. The findings highlight the importance of improved transparency and consultation with the public when communicating information about climate change and related policies.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plays a significant role in bridging the boundary between climate science and politics. Media coverage is crucial for understanding how climate science is communicated and embedded in society. This study analyzes the discursive construction of the IPCC in three Japanese newspapers from 1988 to 2007 in terms of the science–politics boundary. The results show media discourses engaged in boundary-work which rhetorically separated science and politics, and constructed the iconic image of the IPCC as a pure scientific authority. In the linkages between the global and national arenas of climate change, the media “domesticate” the issue, translating the global nature of climate change into a discourse that suits the national context. We argue that the Japanese media’s boundary-work is part of the media domestication that reconstructed the boundary between climate science and politics reflecting the Japanese context.

This paper explores social representations of climate change, investigating how climate change is discussed by Swedish laypeople interacting in focus group interviews. The analysis focuses on prototypical examples and metaphors, which were key devices for objectifying climate change representations. The paper analyzes how the interaction of focus group participants with other speakers, ideas, arguments, and broader social representations shaped their representations of climate change. Climate change was understood as a global but distant issue with severe consequences. There was a dynamic tension between representations of climate change as a gradual vs. unpredictable process. Implications for climate change communication are discussed.

This article presents findings from a large-scale newspaper analysis of climate change discourses in four developed countries, using corpus linguistics methodology. We map the discourse over time, showing peaks and troughs of attention and explaining their causes. Different connotations of common terms such as global warming and climate change in different countries are analysed. Cluster and key-word analysis show the relative salience of specific words and word combinations during crucial periods. We identify main claims makers and the relative visibility of advocates and sceptics. The main finding is that former are far more prominent in all countries. We also look at the coverage of ‘climategate’. Finally, we make reference to existing theoretical frameworks.