Hurricanes And Hegemony: A Qualitative Analysis Of Micro-Level Climate Change Denial Discourses

Keywords

Climate change denial; climate change discourses; Social Network Analysis; Summative content analysis; Twitter

Abstract

The climate change countermovement and its program of climate change denial have been well documented and studied. However, individual rationales for rejecting climate science remain under-studied. Twitter data related to Hurricane Sandy in 2012 are used to understand why individuals reject the orthodox climate consensus, using a summative content analysis of climate change denial discourses. Three major discourses are discovered: rejecting climate science because climate science is a conspiracy favoring growth of government; opposing renewable energy and energy taxation; and expressing fear of governmental abuse of power. Importantly, each discourse expressed certainty that climate science itself was a wholesale fraud; the denial discourses themselves focused far more on climate politics than on science.

Publication Date

9-2-2016

Publication Title

Environmental Politics

Volume

25

Issue

5

Number of Pages

831-852

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2016.1189233

Socpus ID

84973137679 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84973137679

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