Skeptical Discourses about Climate Change on online forums

Transcription

1 Skeptical Discourses about Climate Change on online forums Master Thesis Verheijden, Eline Reg. No.: MSc Thesis Environmental Policy Group Supervisor: Boas, Ingrid 1

2 Summary The aim of this thesis is to investigate how skeptical discourses about climate change on online forums come about and evolve. For this purpose a case study is conducted on the large online forum Reddit. A main result is that the debate on Reddit seems to be polarizing. The discourse on the far skeptic side (trend skepticism) and the counter discourse remain popular over the years, while attribution and impact skepticism are decreasing in popularity. This is also visible in the most dominant storylines. Although the storylines on Reddit are approximately the same as those found in the literature, on Reddit the more radical storylines are more popular than in the literature. For example, the storyline that climate change is a conspiracy caused by politicians is a very popular storyline. Other popular storylines are convincingly in the counter discourse, for example the storyline that points to the effects of global warming. What causes this polarization? On Reddit users are anonymous, only identified by a username they chose themselves. This means that extremer viewpoints will have no real consequences for users. Partly because of this anonymity the discussions on Reddit are also less civilized then in traditional media. There is a lot of insulting and swearing happening, which alienates people from each other. Next to that there are a lot of subreddits geared to specific standpoints, so users can surround themselves with other users thinking alike. In general the amount of interaction between the counter discourse and the skeptical discourses on Reddit is quite limited. Discourses spread on Reddit when users vote on them. If a storyline receives a lot of positive votes it also becomes more popular and will then gain even more exposure. Changes in popularity can by driven by external and internal drivers. External drivers can be external events, for example climategate. They can have a pronounced effect, but these effects are often short-lived. More prolonged external drivers (for example media coverage) have a smaller directly visible effect. But according to Reddit users they have a big impact. Internal drivers are internal discussions on the forum. These internal drivers are difficult to investigate, but have the potential to be very influential. On Reddit there are no real influential opinion makers. This is largely due to the fact that people on Reddit are only known under a synonym. However, some sub forums (subreddits) act as actors. This are especially the subreddits with a very well-defined stance. For example r/libertarian, which is a very skeptic subreddit. These subreddits can even form discourse coalitions. For example, r/libertarian seems to have a discourse coalition with r/climateskeptics 2

3 Table of Contents Summary... 2 Table of figures Introduction Research questions Chapter division Discourse theory and online forums Discourse theory Qualitative discourse theory Quantitative discourse theory Application of discourse theory on online forums Skeptical discourses and counter discourses on climate change Some reasons for climate skepticism Sub discourses of the skeptical discourse Counter discourse Methodology Mechanics of online forums Reddit Steps Case selection Qualitative analysis Quantitative analysis Representativeness of the sample Climate skeptical discourse on Reddit Identification of the key discourses on climate skepticism Trend skepticism Attribution skepticism Impact skepticism Counter discourse Differences between the subreddits The evolution of climate skeptical discourse on Reddit Trends in threads about climate change Drivers of change Changes in discourses over time

4 7. Discussion: comparison between Reddit and the literature Conclusion References Annex1: Storylines and dominance Annex 2 List of external events Annex 3: Interview Questions Annex 4 List of abbreviations Table of figures Figure 1: Climate skepticism in the USA (Dunlap and McCright 2010)... 5 Figure 2: the 9 types of climate skepticism based on Hobson and Niemeyer (2013) Figure 3 by Hobson and Niemeyer (2013) Figure 4: Example of structure non-voting forum. (OmegaJSP 2011) Figure 5: Example of structure Reddit (KuchDaddy 2010) Figure 6: Threads about climate change and global warming on Reddit, Figure 7: Popularity of Reddit across the globe, compiled by Reddit user AmianteDeluxe (AmianteDeluxe 2014) Figure 8: Comments and votes per discourse Figure 9: The amount of comments and net votes for every researched storyline within trend skepticism Figure 10: The amount of comments and net votes for every researched storyline within attribution skepticism Figure 11: The amount of comments and net votes for every researched storyline within impact skepticism Figure 12: The amount of comments and net votes for every researched storyline within the counter discourse Figure 13: Quantity of researched Reddit threads per year Figure 14:Relative amount of searches for "Reddit" on google, january 2009-august2014 (GoogleTrends 2014) Figure 15: Number of times per year that climategate was mentioned (in thread title or opening post) in the subreddits investigated in this research in general and r/climateskeptics in specific Figure 16: Number of times per year that "hearthland institute" was mentioned (in thread title or opening post) in the subreddits investigated in this research Figure 17:Number of times per year that "Hurricane Sandy" was mentioned (in thread title or opening post) in the subreddits investigated in this research

5 1. Introduction This thesis is about climate skepticism on online forums. It aims to first investigate how and what skeptical discourses emerge on online forums, and second how and why these discourse evolve. Although climate change is widely accepted among many political and scientific communities, there are still many climate skeptics. See for instance the following quote by Merlinm, a user of the large online forum Reddit. AGW (Note: AGW = Anthropogenic Global Warming) theory is extremely flimsy. Given that the track record on climate predictions has been awful, they had to rename it 'climate change' and search for all kinds of secondary effects to explain why the earth is cooling. What does this say about the orginal theory? Why were the computer models so wrong? (and why in the world are we still trying to use them for legilation?) (Merlinm 2009) Some research even indicates that climate skepticism might be increasing. For example in Britain the percentage of people that believed in the existence of climate change has dropped significantly in 2011 compared to 2005 (Poortinga, Spence et al. 2011). A similar trend is visible in the USA, as illustrated by figure 1. Figure 1: Climate skepticism in the USA (Dunlap and McCright 2010) Online forums are one of the key places where climate skepticism develops and is being promoted. On forums people are anonymous and do not have to worry about what other people think of their opinion. And on forums people with the same ideas can flock together in small communities. These forums can also be very influential in determining views and opinion. This is because online forums are very big and therefore a great number of people spend a lot of time on them. However, current research about climate skepticism mostly focuses on printed press (Gavin and Marshall 2011). Therefore, the development of climate skepticism on the internet is largely overlooked. 5

6 This research aims to fill that gap in the literature by investigating how skeptical discourses on climate change come about and evolve on online forums. I will examine this by means of a case study. I will analyze how skeptical discourses on climate change come about and evolve in one of the main online forums: Reddit Research questions The main research question that will be answered in this thesis is: How do skeptical discourses about climate change on online forums come about and evolve? This is examined by the help of the following sub-research questions: How does the formation and spreading of discourses work on an online forum? What are the main skeptical discourses and their counter discourses? How do these discourses change over time and what is driving this? What is/are the most dominant discourse(s)? How does such dominance emerge and spread? What are the main actors and discourse coalitions and what is their role? To what extent do discourses on online forums differ from those found in the literature? 1.2. Chapter division In the chapters of this thesis the main research question and sub research questions will be discussed. In the list below it is shown which chapter deals with which subjects. Chapter 2 discusses both qualitative and quantitative discourse theory and how this theory can be applied to online forums. In chapter 3 climate skepticism is further investigated. Which discourses and counter discourses do occur in the literature? A framework of skeptical discourses is also introduced. Next, chapter 4 outlines the methodology used in this thesis. In this chapter I also select the cases used for this study. The first results are written down in chapter 5. In this chapter the discourses and storylines found in the research are discussed. The differences between different subreddits (sub forums) are also investigated. Chapter 6 is the second chapter with results. This chapter is about the changes in discourses and storylines over time. The discussion can be found in chapter 7. This discussion especially deals with the similarities and differences between Reddit and results found in literature. 6

7 The last chapter is chapter 8, which is the contains the conclusion of the entire thesis. In this chapter the main and sub-research questions are also answered. 7

8 2. Discourse theory and online forums In this chapter I will first discuss existing discourse theory and then explain how I will apply this in an online forum. I have split discourse theory in qualitative and quantitative discourse theory, and will address these separately. I will also discuss the mechanics of an online forum and Reddit specifically, and then explain how discourse theory can be adapted to these mechanics Discourse theory First the question arises: what exactly is considered as a discourse? Hajer (1995:44) defines it as: A specific ensemble of ideas, concepts and categorizations that are produced, reproduced and transformed in a particular set of practices and through which meaning is given to physical and social realities. Discourses are not fixed, they can change in time. Rothe (2007) defines it as that the meaning is 'temporarily stabilized'. This means that the meaning seems fixed, but is able to gradually change over time. Furthermore, they have a self-enforcing potential. If a discourse is repeated over and over again, they will start to look natural and taken for granted. A discourse can be seen as the goggles we use to look at the world, as the way we make sense of the word around us. There is a material reality, but it does not have any meaning to us until we give it a meaning. This is done using language as a tool. (Rothe 2007). Language shapes our view of the world and reality, and is not just a passive mirror of it. For example, the change of our view of the world from being large and limitless to being a small and vulnerable ball is largely determined by how we talk about it, how we view the world (Hajer 1995). As Hajer (1995) also states, whether or not environmental problems appear as anomalies to the existing institutional arrangements depends first of all on the way in which these problems are framed and defined. That is what the environmental conflict is about Language can be spoken or written. Written language can be seen more as an object or indirect interaction, while spoken language is more of an direct interaction (Dijk 1997). Spoken language has more aspects to it that can add to its exact meaning, for example intonation. This means that spoken language should be analyzed in a different way compared to written language. However, language is also embedded in practices, it does not float (Hajer and Versteeg 2005). A strength of discourse analysis is to reveal this embeddedness. Next to that a discourse can show how questions (Hajer & Versteeg, 2005). It can for example trace when a certain term was first used, in what context, and how that term than later on evolved. A discourse is different from a discussion, the discussion is the object of analysis in discourse analysis. Discourse analysis looks for certain regularities in discussions. (Hajer and Versteeg 2005) 8

9 In every period of time there is often one emblem of environmental discourse. Such an emblem is an issue that stands out in a particular period and, in that period, dominates the public and political attention. A while ago acid rain was such an emblem. (Hajer 1995) However, currently climate change get so much attention it can probably be seen as this eras emblem of environmental discourse Qualitative discourse theory For the qualitative discourse theory I will largely follow the approach presented by Hajer (1995). Hajer calls his own approach the argumentative approach. This is because he focuses a lot on what is being said and how that is phrased, and by what actor coalitions. He also put a large focus on the struggle for power and dominance between discourses. As I will explain later this approach will be very useful to use in forums. There are many different discourses about environmental problems. These discourses are constantly locked in a struggle for dominance. Discursive struggle is a large part of the theory of Hajer (1995). A discourse gains dominance when it and its storylines are used frequently. When a discourse is dominant people will see the world according to the view of the discourse. According to Hajer (1995), a discourse needs credibility, acceptability and trust to become generally accepted. This are the three concepts that determine the dynamics of the power struggle between discourses. Credibility is needed to let actors believe in the positioning a certain discourse implies. This is mostly determined by the plausibility of the argument. Acceptability means that a discourse seems attractive or necessary. For example, the ecological modernization discourse is attractive, because it states you can combine economic growth with environmental improvement. This is attractive, because economic growth is considered necessary, but is also often seen as difficult or impossible to combine with environmental improvement. Trust can be about two aspects of the discourse. First, people can have trust in the actors that promote the discourse. Second, they can have trust in the practices that the discourse is promoting. Trust lets actors see past small uncertainties or flaws in the discourse. Without trust those uncertainties might invoke doubt in the discourse. And doubt could lead to people changing to another discourse. (Hajer 1995) An entire discourse is often too much for people to take in all at once. That is why discourses are brought over via story lines. A story line is according to Hajer (1995) a narrative on social reality through which elements of many different domains are combined and that provide actors with a set of symbolic references that suggest a common understanding. Basically it is a way of simplifying a discourse - and making it easier to understand - by using a story. A mini story that links to other concepts that are easy to understand. It is not always a strategic choice to present a discourse like that in a storyline. Often it is the way of talking 9

10 within the discourse. Or, in other words, the way actors within the discourse think and communicate. Therefore it is natural for those actors to convey the message via that storyline, and not necessarily a conscious choice. However, even if actors use the same storylines, this does not automatically imply mutual understanding. The interpretation of the storylines can differ drastically between the different actors (Hajer and Versteeg 2005). For example, the perceived definition of terms in the storyline can differ, which gives the storyline a different meaning. For example: does sustainability only take into account care of the environment, or also good social conditions? Another part of discourse theory are discourse coalitions. Hajer (1995: 65) describes them as: the ensemble of (1) a set of story-lines, (2) the actors who utter these story-lines and (3) the practices on which this discursive activity is based. The actors that are in that coalition are attracted to the same storylines. They might hold their position due to different reasons, and even come from different discourses. For example the storyline the cure for climate change is worse than the disease This storyline can be joined by US libertarians, because in their view the government intervention is bad, even when there is a lot of warming happening. But this storyline can also be joined by climate deniers, because in their view there is no global warming. And if there is no warming, any money spend towards climate change is wasted. The actors within a discourse coalition also have not necessarily met, and don t follow a joined, agreed upon strategy. A discourse coalition increases the authority and acceptance of the storylines that are promoted in that coalition, and thereby the dominance of the involved discourses Quantitative discourse theory A qualitative discourse analysis only reveals part of the story. There is a risk that some discursive trends will be overlooked, especially because the amount of data on an online forum is very large. For that reason, this thesis also includes a quantitative discourse analysis. This quantitative analysis is largely based on Boykoff (2008). In his quantitative discourse analysis Boykoff mostly examines the changes in time within discourses. Boykoff s research focuses on the role of discourse in newspaper articles. His approach consists of several steps, these will be discussed below. First of all, Boykoff (2008) examined the amount of articles published every month on climate change, and related increases in publication numbers to real world events. In this manner, he tried to show the impact of the events on the discourse. In this way, he examines the external influence on the nature of a discourse. Secondly, he conducted a more detailed analysis. For the more detailed analysis a random sample of the total body of articles was taken. In this case he selected 20% (every fifth article chronologically) and thus reached a total number of articles to analyze of 974. For this detailed analysis to be quantifiable, it is important to define a set of categories. Every newspaper is then placed in one or more categories. Boykoff (2008) defined frames, which 10

11 function as his categories. An example of such a frame (and thus a category in this research) was the ecological/meteorological frame. Every article could have a primary and a secondary frame. The primary frame was the most dominant one in an article and the secondary was another frame that might also be present in the article. Next to that there were separate categories of frames for the headlines of the articles. Mainly because a lot of readers only scan headlines, and in newspapers often headlines are not written by the people who wrote the article. Most of the statistics used were just descriptive. A main point of analysis was the number of articles that used a certain frame, and how that percentage changed over the years. Were there visible trends or sudden changes after certain events? Were there a lot of differences between the newspapers? 2.2. Application of discourse theory on online forums In the above sections the literature about discourse theory was discussed. But those two approaches were not developed to be used on online forums. This section explains what elements of the discourse theory as discussed above can be used directly and which aspects will need adaptation The storylines of Hajer can be used very well on an online forum. It will be easy to recognize them since forums are text based. On an online forum discourses will be basically brought over via these story lines. The other The concept of discourse coalitions from Hajer will need some adaptations though. The storylines will be easily recognizable. However, the actors will be more difficult. Generally on a forum users are anonymous by default. They do have their username, but it stops there. Therefore, it will be harder to identify the real actors. There are two ways in which this can be addressed. First of all, on an online forum, a discourse coalition can take on the form of a sub-forum, or two sub-forums promoting the same storylines. In this manner discourse coalitions can be analyzed. It will probably be mostly the smaller, more specific sub-forums that can act in that way. Secondly, there might be some very influential users that can be identified. For example, there is one biologist on the online forum Reddit, whose username is Unidan. Anything he says about biology is immediately accepted (Know Your Meme 2013). Interactions between different discourses can give insight in the discursive struggles happening on online forums. Because of this it is useful to pay special attention to storylines that are an explicit reaction on other discourses. This thesis also aims to investigate the dominance of discourses. Building on Hajer (1995), this can be examined by to what extent the key ideas of the discourse are accepted. On an online forum this acceptance can be measured by the number of people that approve or disapprove of a post. Here it is also possible to examine whether these dominant discourses fulfill Hajer s criteria for a successful discourse: do they have credibility, acceptability and 11

12 trust? Credibility will be determined by looking if people notice logical fallacies in the argument or not. For acceptability, it is possible to investigate if the discourse is described as being necessary or attractive, and why. Trust in actors will be almost impossible to investigate due to the anonymity of users on an online forum. A possible option is that users mention influential people outside of the forums in an attempt to gain trust. Another point that requires attention is if people trust the practices that the discourse preaches, or if these are being questioned. The quantitative part of the discourse analysis can be executed almost exactly as described in the approach of Boykoff. Logically it is not possible to use the same frames as Boykoff did. Therefore frames relevant for this research will have to be created (although in this research the word discourses or storylines is used). Next to this this research deals with forum threads instead of articles. The title of the article is replaced by the title of the thread. A major part of this research is to look at changes in the discourse, and if these are internally or externally driven. Similar to Boykoff, a list of external events was be created, and it was investigated if these events caused big changes in a discourse, or in the occurrence of a discourse. It is even possible for a new discourse to originate this way. There can also be change that was not caused by the big external events, but change that was driven by internal factors, by a discursive struggle. These internal factors are especially internal discussions, that can cause people to change their minds. Discussions that can cause users learn from the other users on the forum and to be convinced by their arguments. In this way it would be possible to see if external or internal factors have the biggest influence on the changing of the discourse. In this chapter discourse theory and the application of this theory on online forums was discussed. This research mainly draws on two approaches to discourse theory: the argumentative approach introduced by Hajer (1995) and the quantitative approach used by Boykoff (2008). Most parts of discourse theory, especially those based on the words used, can be easily adapted to be used on online forums. Some parts are more difficult to research on online forums, mainly because actors are anonymous and cannot reliably be investigated. 12

13 3. Skeptical discourses and counter discourses on climate change In this section I will describe some characteristics of the skeptical discourses and counter discourses on climate change. This will serve as a guideline later on in the research, because it shows what kind of arguments can I expect to encounter on the online forums. In the analysis, I will be able to see if what I was expecting to find via the literature was also actually found on the online forums Some reasons for climate skepticism Climate skepticism as discussed in this thesis is a broad concept. It refers to less to scientific skepticism and more to climate denial, rejection of science and ignorance. In this definition scientific skepticism is trying to check theories by evidence and reasoning. (Lewandowsky, Oberauer et al. 2014) Dunlap (2013) states climate change science is very complex. Next to this there are many uncertainties in the risk climate change poses. This makes it hard for laypersons (and policy makers) to understand and perceive climate change, and thus also to change their behavior to counter it. This is especially problematic since CO 2 production is firmly rooted in our current society, and will need behavioral change to be solved. Therefore there is currently a large gap between the view of scientists and the general public regarding climate change. Next to this, there is an organized campaign aimed a spreading disinformation about climate change. Think-tanks, for example the Heartland institute, create a lot of documents that seem to disprove climate change. (Soest 2011) If people are skeptic is also determined by their core values and worldviews. (Poortinga, Spence et al. 2011) This is reinforced by the research of Lewandowsky, Oberauer et al. (2014). They researched predictors of the rejection of climate science. They state that reliance on the internet is a common attribute for people that reject science. This would be because scientific literature does not promote denial, while on the net everybody can find likeminded individuals. Furthermore, they state that rejection of climate science is associated with: Endorsement of unregulated free markets Affinity with conspiracy ideation The perception that previous environmental problems have been resolved Perceived scientific consensus is associated with the acceptance of (climate)science. This probably also works the other way around Sub discourses of the skeptical discourse There are some prominent discursive elements found for most variants of a skeptical discourse on climate change. The main points and argument identified by Gavin and Marshall (2011) are: 13

14 The scientific evidence behind climate change is weak or non-existent. Skeptics often say the entire scientific process is flawed. They claim scientist only produce studies that 'prove' global warming because that will advance their career. This goes together with the statement that the IPCC is a political institute and not a research institute. The media are exaggerating the climate change threat because drama sells. Politicians help with that and are often hypocritical. Believing in climate change is akin to religious faith Climate change will bring more benefits than harm Mitigating it will do more harm than good. There will be large economic damage, while the impact of mitigation will be marginal, especially if not all countries will start mitigating Aside from these set of common features of skeptical discourse on climate change, there exist different sub-categories, variants, of the discourse. Three basic categories of skeptics are often found in literature. Amongst others, Washington and Cook (2011) explain these three categories. These are: Trend skeptics. Those who say that the world is not warming at all. According to (Oreskes 2007) only about 56% of Americans think that global temperatures have actually risen. Therefore, this is a very dominant form of skepticism. Attribution skeptics. Those who say the world is warming, but it is not caused by humans. Impact skeptics: These state the world is warming due to human causes, but claim that the impact will be beneficial. This division in 3 categories is the main backbone of this section. In the rest of this chapter I will discuss other divisions, but these are always based on this division in 3 categories described above. When there is a reference to the 3 categories that implies a reference to this division in trend, attribution and impact skeptics. This section will first discuss different applications and variants of the 3 categories, and then explain which of these is used in this research and for what reason. Hobson and Niemeyer (2013) argue that the 3 categories are comparable to the 3 kinds of denial often found after events such as genocide. The 3 kinds of denial are: Literal denial; this is denying that an event actually took place Interpretive denial: the event took place but people give the facts a different meaning Implicatory denial: The event happened, but it has nothing to do with them. Or they state they could do nothing about it. 14

15 They then state that literal denial and interpretive denial could be compared to trend and attribution sceptics. Trend skepticism denies or twists the warming trend, while attribution skepticism does that with human impact. Implicatory denial is related to impact skepticism. They think that the impact of climate change has nothing to do with them, and they cannot change it either. As mentioned, some authors split the 3 categories trend, attribution and impact skepticism into more detailed categories. For example, Soest (2014) identifies 4 main categories. He uses trend and attribution skepticism, but sees next to impact skepticism also cost-benefit skepticism. This means that these people believe that it would more expensive to prevent global warming or adapt to it, compared to just letting it happen. Washington and Cook include that specific category in trend skepticism. Next to that van Soest distinguishes 3 minor categories. The first one is haughtiness skepticism. This means that people think it is haughtiness to think that humans can influence something as big as the earth. This is often inspired by religious motives. The second one is motive skepticism. Motive skeptics doubt intentions and integrity of climate science and climate scientists. An extreme variant of this skepticism is thinking that climate change is a conspiracy. The third and final minor category is free market skepticism. This means that these people find all ideas conspicuous if they imply that a free market isn t the best for humanity. Poortinga et al. (2011) also uses the 3 categories, and subdivides these categories based on the level of certainty the public has. He calls these levels skepticism, uncertainty and ambivalence. Skepticism here refers to strong held beliefs, often coupled with a rejection of climate science. Uncertainty refers to doubt. This doubt can be related to trend, attribution or impact of global warming. Ambivalence is the last subcategory, this refers to persons that hold beliefs regarding climate change that are in conflict with each other. Another, more detailed, split based on the 3 main categories is described by Hobson and Niemeyer (2013) They call the three categories the nature of skepticism. But they make another distinction, between emphatic skepticism, displacement and epistemic uncertainty. Emphatic skepticism can be seen as denial, emphatics insist they are completely in the right. Displacement means people think of different scales, this can be for example in temporal, geographical or monetary scales. For example: climate change will happen later and here we won't notice the impact, only elsewhere. And epistemic uncertainty is uncertainty about the facts. This includes the people that cannot make sense of the debate and are left confused. Combined, this yields 9 types of climate skepticism, that can be seen in the diagram below. Trend Attribution Impact Emphatic Emphatic trend skepticism Emphatic attribution skepticism Emphatic impact skepticism Displacement Displaced trend Displaced attribution Displaced impact 15

16 skepticism skepticism skepticism Epistemic uncertainty Epistemic uncertain trend skepticism Epistemic uncertain attribution skepticism Epistemic uncertain impact skepticism Figure 2: the 9 types of climate skepticism based on Hobson and Niemeyer (2013) This divide in the 9 types of climate skepticism is more detailed than the standard three categories. Next to this these 9 types are quite easy to recognize in written text and individual comments, which is the type of data I will encounter on online forums. Next to that these 9 types do not require further knowledge about individuals that is not available when analysing online forums. For example the split by Poortinga et al (2011) requires knowledge about possible conflicting opinions held by an individual. This is not possible if not all opinions of a certain person are known, as is the case with online forums. However, most people generally don't fall in only one of these 9 types of climate skepticism, but in multiple simultaneously. For example, one person can believe that the earth is not warming, but also believe that if the earth would warm, the impact would be beneficial. This then would fall under both deep skepticism and impact skepticism. In other words, these categories have a lot of overlap when you look at them from an actors perspective. When looked at from a statement perspective they are distinct. Hobson and Niemeyer (2013) try to solve that via a method called Q Method and identified 5 discourses. I will discuss them here: 1. Emphatic negation The people in this discourse believe that there is not enough knowledge about climate change to claim it as true. Changes are due to climate variation. 2. Unperturbed Pragmatism Climate change is not (yet) here. Next to that the world will be able to easily adapt to any possible changes. 3. Proactive Uncertainty This is a broad centrist discourse. It features general skepticism, a vague idea that something should probably be done while thinking there are no easy solutions. 4. Earnest Acclimatization Climate change is happening, and it is a problem. But we as humans did not cause it. So we should adapt to the changes, but not reduce emissions. 5. Noncommittal consent People in this discourse believe climate change is probably real and anthropogenic. However they are skeptical because they are uncertain about key aspects of climate chance. This also means a bigger emphasis on impacts, not causes. In the diagram below the main storylines related to every of this discourses can be found. 16

17 Figure 3 by Hobson and Niemeyer (2013) As is visible in this diagram, even after finding the 5 discourses, there is still a lot of overlap between them. Next to that, to make such a diagram via Q method it is necessary to have specific questionnaire or interview questions. Since I study sources on the internet, I won t have this format. An additional point is that this research does not focus on the actors, but more on storylines and discourses present. Actors are discussed, but only in a limited way. Therefore this stap that Hobson and Niemeyer (2013) make after identifying the 9 types of climate skepticism is not useful for my research. Therefore this step will not be taken in my research and I will only focus on the 9 types of climate skepticism Counter discourse In this research the counter discourse is defined as the discourse that tries to counter the skeptical discourses. They try to show that climate change is real, is caused by humans and is a threat. The counter discourse is not necessarily a direct reaction to a skeptic comment, commenters can also try to counter the skeptical discourses pre-emptively. It was difficult to identify typical characteristics of discourses that counter skepticism. Often these counter discourses seem to just follow the skeptical discourse and try to debunk one argument at a time, using mainstream science. This is, however, less efficient when the 17

18 scientific process itself is being questioned. (Washington and Cook, 2011) It was also difficult to find main storylines or categories of the counter discourse in the literature. Therefore in this research the counter discourse counts as one big category. Washington and Cook (2011) also propose a strategy for dealing with skeptical discourses. They state every skeptical argument falls into one of 5 categories. They then state that those arguments can be debunked by showing that the argument belongs in this category and why. I encountered some of these arguments as storylines in my research, especially the conspiracy theories, misrepresentations and cherry picking. The debunking of some of these arguments was also found and included in the counter discourse storylines. The 5 types of arguments with examples are listed below. 1. Conspiracy theories a. Climategate proves a conspiracy 2. Fake experts Here people with little or no actual proficiency are quoted as experts about climate change. This is often done to show a lack of consensus about climate change. 3. Impossible expectations a. Climate models are unreliable 4. Misrepresentations and logical fallacies a. Climate has changed in the past, so that it is changing now is not special. 5. Cherry picking a. temperature measurements are unreliable b. Global warming stopped in 1998 c. The hockey stick was broken d. The sun is causing global warming e. Global warming is good This list does make it sound like climate skepticism is a deliberate choice. This is often however not the case. There are some institutes that deliberately use these arguments for denial, but this is not the case for all institutes. However, these institutions can cause confusion in the general public, leading to more skepticism there. This chapter investigated literature about skeptical discourses and the counter discourse on climate change. The skeptical discourse is to divided into three categories: trend, attribution and impact skepticism. For the rest of my research I will use a division based on those three categories: the 9 types of skepticism as described by Hobson and Niemeyer (2013). In the literature research a subdivision of the counter discourse was not found. Therefore the counter discourse will not be subdivided in the rest of the research. 18

19 4. Methodology This research is based on a discourse analysis of the discourses making/framing of climate skepticism on large public forums. The focus shall be on discourses about climate skepticism and their counter discourses. In this analysis I combined a quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis. The qualitative part was based on Hajer (1995). The quantitative part was largely based on Boykoff (2008) This research is conducted by means of a case study. The reason for this is that most forums have a very large amount of content and it would have been almost impossible within the given timeframe to research multiple forums in detail. This is why I have chosen to only investigate one forum. The first step was to determine which forum I wanted to investigate. On the basis of internet research concluded that Reddit is the largest international English forum, not counting Facebook. (Alexa.com 2014) That is why I focused my research on Reddit. More information about Reddit and forums in general can be found in section Mechanics of online forums This research examines online forums. But how do forums work? This is what this section aims to answer. I will first generally describe the workings of online forums and as a next step focus specifically on Reddit. According to Oxford Dictionaries, a forum is an Internet site where users can post comments about a particular issue or topic and reply to other users' postings; a message board. (Oxford_Dictionaries 2014) This is also the definition that I use in this research. Forums can differ widely in range. There are very big general forums and smaller very specific ones. A very big difference with traditional media is that people that participate on a forum can choose their own name, and on most forums this does not have to be connected to their real name in any way. This means that contributors are anonymous on online forums, which makes identifying actors hard and the trust in actors basically non-existent. For example, if someone is watching the news and a scientist is telling a story about climate change, they know it is a trusted scientist. And they can trust that person and his words on the television purely because they know this identity. But on online forums this does not exist, here it is unknown if a person is an expert or not. Therefore it is very hard to trust someone on his or her identity. Trust in a person must be earned by the posts made. The focus on forums will therefore most likely be on the text only. What is written, and how that has been phrased are the main questions that can be investigated. Hajer s approach therefore fits this well to conduct this research. 19

20 So how does a forum work? Often a forum is divided in multiple sub forums, each devoted to a special subject, such as horses, sharing of homemade art, or discussions about politics. In every sub forum users can post a starting post. It is always possible for such a starting post to be plain text, but sometimes it is also possible to start with a hyperlink. Then other users can comment on the starting post and the comments below it. The entirety of starting post and all comments below it is called a thread. There are two main categories of forums: without voting and with voting. In an online forum without voting the comments in a thread are sorted chronologically. In these cases, it is difficult to see if a comment is appreciated by the community, unless that is expressed in follow up comments. In general there is only one single level of comments in a forum without voting, Therefore, it is not possible to specifically react on a certain comment, because you directly react on the entire thread. This generates a structure like in figure 4 below. The title here is completely on the top (Where Does The Water Go?). The first post is the opening post, and the post below that the other posts in chronological order. The complete structure is the thread. Figure 4: Example of structure non-voting forum. (OmegaJSP 2011) In forums with voting it is easier to see which comments are appreciated. Comments are generally sorted on popularity. But to be able to keep a discussion going there are often multiple levels of comments. This means that it is possible to comment on the starting, post, but also on separate comments below it. This generates a structure like pictured below in figure 5. The post on the top (with the big title and a box around the text) is the opening post. The posts below it are the comments. The total of all the comments and the opening post is the thread. 20

21 Figure 5: Example of structure Reddit (KuchDaddy 2010) Forums are always moderated. This means that there are some users of the forum with more power. These users are promoted to moderators. They can be promoted into this position by administrators (the people that make the forum) or sometimes by other moderators. Moderators can for example delete comments or ban users. The level of moderation can differ greatly. Sometimes there is basically no moderation at all, and even plain insults are permitted. Other forums or subforums have very strict moderation. This means that comments can for example be deleted by posting something out of context or making jokes Reddit In this research I do a case study of Reddit. Therefore I will now go into more detail about the specific mechanics of this forum. Reddit is an online community or forum, which was established in As mentioned before it is a very large forum. As of April 7th, Reddit had 114,943,104 unique visitors in the previous month, coming from over 190 countries. There are many different subreddits. A subreddit is like a sub forum described above, a part of the site dedicated to a certain topic or idea. As of April 7 th, there were 6420 active subreddits on Reddit. (Reddit 2014) 21

22 Subreddits on Reddit are created and moderated by users. Some of these subreddit are default subreddits. This means that if you open the front-page of Reddit, the most popular threads from these default subreddits combined will be shown there. On Reddit users are able to posts opening posts as links and as text. In a link-thread the user submits a link and a title, but no additional text. In a text-thread a user submits a title and some text below it. On all threads other users can comment with text and embedded links. On Reddit it is possible to vote on both threads and comments. A positive vote is called an upvote and shows appreciation of the content. A negative vote is called a downvote and shows disapproval of the content. For every upvote a comment or thread gains a point, and for every downvote it loses a point. It is thus possible for a comments and threads to have negative net votes. From upvotes and downvotes an user receives Karma. This is the net amount of points you have gathered on that Reddit account Steps In order to structurally take on this research, I followed a certain amount of steps. These steps are described in the subheadings below Case selection Because Reddit is such a large site, I had to specify some subreddits that I wanted to study. For this I use the method of Antilla (2005). She did a search in a newspaper database on the keywords 'climate AND change' and 'global AND warming'. This yields duplicate results when both climate change and global warming are both mentioned in one article. In that case, she had to remove duplicate articles as the next step. I applied the same strategy on reddit. I did a search on /r/all, that includes all subreddits on the terms climate change and global warming. The first 8 subreddit to show up in the results were selected. In figure 6 below these subreddits are summarized. The amount of subscribers is the amount of people that get posts from that subreddit on their front page of Reddit. That means they can see all posts without specifically clicking on the subreddit. I also looked at how many threads there are to investigate. The amount of threads is the amount of results a search on the word 'climate change' or 'global warming' in that subreddit returned. A note here is that the climate change and global warming threads will be partly overlapping, since these words seem to be used interchangeably. A lot of subreddits were established on January 25, This is because that was the first day Reddit users could make their own subreddits, leading to a huge influx of subreddits that day (Steve[spez] 2008). The first year where all of the researched subreddits exists is The research for this study was done in August and September This leads to the time frame chosen for this research, which is January 2009 until August

23 Subreddit Subscribers Threads climate change Threads global warming Day of establishing subreddit /r/climate May 7, 2008 /r/climateskeptics July 16, 2008 /r/libertarian January 25, 2008 /r/worldnews January 25, 2008 /r/askreddit January 25, 2008 /r/politics August 6, 2007 /r/environment January 25, 2008 /r/askscience September 5, 2008 Figure 6: Threads about climate change and global warming on Reddit, Primary selection of threads During the rest of my research I used one standard method to randomly select threads to research. This method is as follows: I searched in a subreddit for climate change OR global warming (so both are included). These results I sorted on new so the ones that were posted the latest are shown on top of the page. This sorting does not exclude any threads, just orders and numbers them in a certain way. After that I looked at the amount of threads found in the search. Via I then produced a random number between 1 and the number of threads found in the search. The thread with the corresponding number would then be selected for analysis. In this the newest thread is #1. Reddit numbers these threads automatically. If the thread that I randomly generated had no comments I chose the first thread below that thread that had comments. When searching I disabled custom subreddit styles. This is because some subreddits, like r/politics, disabled numbering in their subreddit style which made searching for the correct thread very difficult. Boykoff selected every fifth article in his sample. He then ended up with a total of 974 newspaper articles and was able to draw reliable conclusions. I want to apply the same strategy, though I had to adjust how many articles I will sample. The time it takes to analyze one thread turned out to be quite high. Next to that, one thread always contains several comments. Therefore the amount of threads that I was able to research turned out 23

24 significantly lower. I ended up with 24 threads in the qualitative analysis, and 80 threads in the quantitative analysis. The 80 threads in the quantitative analysis contained 851 comment about climate change or global warming Qualitative analysis As a first step of the discourse analysis, I identified the key discourses by studying a selection of threads. It is impossible to study all threads in great detail, because of how many threads there are. I randomly selected 24 threads with the method described in section These 24 threads contained 295 comments related to climate change. I have read these 24 threads very carefully, in which I have gathered every relevant storyline that I came across in a comment. Afterwards I tried to group these storylines based on similarities and see which storylines occurred more than once. Every storyline that I came across more than one was used in my qualitative analysis. This resulted in a spreadsheet (named qualitative analysis). This spreadsheet is available on request. I also categorized the storylines based on the division in the 9 types of climate skepticism as described in section 3.3 Next to that I made a category for the counter discourse, and two special categories. The special categories were skeptic insults and counter insults. I included these 2 categories because I encountered a lot of insults in my qualitative analysis, and these insults did not really belong in one of the 9 categories. A list of these storylines can be found in Annex Quantitative analysis With the storylines described during the discourse identification stage I can scanned all comments in threads for these storylines and investigate which discourses are present in those threads. In this stage of the research 80 threads were investigated, which consist of 10 threads from every selected subreddit. I developed a spreadsheet that contained every storyline found in the qualitative analysis. For every thread I categorized all relevant comments under the correct storylines, and also wrote down the amount of votes they had gotten. This resulted in a spreadsheet with the amount of comments and net votes per storyline, that could be sorted on date and subreddit. This spreadsheet (named quantitative analysis) is available on request. Based on that spreadsheet I could determine in which subreddits on Reddit discourses originated and if and how they spread. I could also trace changes in the occurrence and popularity of storylines. In this investigation I also tried to differentiate between internal and external drivers, as I mentioned before. Internal drivers are because of the dynamics of interaction that take place within the forum. In order to easier identify the external drivers I made a list of major events that can be found in my relevant timeframe, so from 2009 until now. I have examined the by tracking how often certain events were mentioned on the researched subreddits. The 24

25 assumption I make here is that more mentioned equals more influential. This list can be found in Annex 2. I tried to link these mentions to sudden changes of discourses or the occurrence of storylines, but this has proven to be difficult. Furthermore I wanted to see if the discourses and storylines that I identified differed from the discourses found outside of forums. This could show if online forums substantially differ from the traditional media or act as a mirror of those. To investigate these possible differences I compared the discourses I found with the literature. Next to this I also used two expert interviews to get a better view of discourses outside of forums. The first interviewee was Jan Paul van Soest, a firm believer in the counter discourse and author of the book de Twijfelbrigade. The second interviewee was Hajo Smit. He is a climate skeptic and cofounder of the skeptic blog A list of basic interview questions can be found in Annex 3. Next to this I tried to see if the discourses are seen as credible, acceptable and trustworthy, via the ways mentioned in section 2.3. And finally I tried to identify the key players that are promoting the discourse. I tried to this by checking if the same users occurred multiple times. Finally, I was not able to identify single powerful users that represented an discourse or storyline. Therefore, I only examined whether and how subreddits act as discourse coalitions Representativeness of the sample I investigated 851 comments in the quantitative analysis. I assume this is enough to draw reliable conclusions about the commenters on Reddit, since this number is close to the amount of articles Boykoff researched. However, it is more difficult to extend these conclusions to all the readers of Reddit and near impossible to extend this to an even bigger audience outside of Reddit, for example visitors of other sites. This is because the people that commented on Reddit have selected themselves, and are likely not representative of a larger group. They will be people that have internet access, and that are most likely very interested in climate change. People that are not interested in climate change will not seek out an online forum to post about it. Reddit is an predominantly English forum. This means that in order to obtain access to Reddit it is necessary to have internet access and a decent understanding of the English language. This means that although the users of Reddit originate from all over the world, this distribution is not even. 25

26 Figure 7: Popularity of Reddit across the globe, compiled by Reddit user AmianteDeluxe (AmianteDeluxe 2014) As can be seen from the map above, Reddit is as expected most popular in English speaking countries. Next to the English speaking countries, is also Europe is quite well represented, while Africa seems to be largely absent. In the comments I have researched on Reddit the dark red countries will likely be overrepresented, while the lighter colored countries will be underrepresented. This bias will likely be even be enlarged due to the fact that the already dominant continents (Europe, North-America and Australia) have more internet access than, for example, Africa. This effect is because this map is based popularity rank of a website in a country, not the actual amount of visitors. Concluding, in this research a case study was executed on several sub forums of the large international forum Reddit. The research consists of two main parts: a qualitative and a quantitative part. In the qualitative part the main skeptical and counter storylines are identified and categorized. Then, in the quantitative part the dominance of the discourses is investigated. This part also includes changes in dominance and content of the discourses, plus the drivers of these changes. The conclusions drawn by this study (these will be shown in the next chapters) will be valid for active users of Reddit. 26