Climate change and 'climategate' in online reader comments: a mixed methods study

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dc.contributor.authorKoteyko, Nelyaen
dc.contributor.authorJaspal, Rusien
dc.contributor.authorNerlich, Brigitteen
dc.date.accessioned2013-01-11T11:47:35Z
dc.date.available2013-01-11T11:47:35Z
dc.date.issued2012
dc.descriptionThe file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.en
dc.description.abstractClimate change has rarely been out of the public spotlight in the first decade of this century. The high-profile international meetings and controversies such as ‘climategate’ have highlighted the fact that it is as much a political issue as it is a scientific one, while also drawing our attention to the role of social media in reflecting, promoting or resisting such politicisation. In this article, we propose a framework for analysing one type of social media venue that so far has received little attention from social scientists – online reader comments. Like media reporting on climate change, reader comments on this reporting contribute to the diverse, complex and contested discourses on climate change, and can reveal the meanings and discursive resources brought to the ongoing debate by laypeople rather than political elites. The proposed framework draws on research in computer- mediated communication, corpus linguistics and discourse analysis and takes into account both the content of such ‘lay talk’ and its linguistic characteristics within the specific parameters of the web-based context. Using word frequencies, qualitative study of co-text and user ratings, we analyse a large volume of comments published on the UK tabloid newspaper website at two different points in time – before and after the East Anglia controversy. The results reveal how stereotypes of science and politics are appropriated in this type of discourse, how readers’ constructions of climate science have changed after ‘climategate’, and how climate-sceptic arguments are adopted and contested in computer-mediated peer-to-peer interaction.en
dc.identifier.citationKoteyko, N., Jaspal, R. and Nerlich, B. (2012) Climate Change and "Climategate" in Online Reader Comments: A Mixed Methods Study. The Geographical Journal, 179 (1), pp. 74-86en
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4959.2012.00479.x
dc.identifier.issn1475-4959
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2086/8042
dc.language.isoenen
dc.peerreviewedYesen
dc.publisherRoyal Geographical Societyen
dc.researchgroupPsychologyen
dc.researchinstituteMedia Discourse Centre (MDC)en
dc.researchinstituteMary Seacole Research Centreen
dc.subjectclimate scepticismen
dc.subjectdiscourse analysisen
dc.subjectonline reader commentsen
dc.subject‘climategate’en
dc.subjectcorpus linguisticsen
dc.titleClimate change and 'climategate' in online reader comments: a mixed methods studyen
dc.typeArticleen

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