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This thesis examines left- and right- leaning users on Australian Twitter in an effort to understand the language use of the different parties to online climate change discourse. The data are taken from Australian Twitter users between 2020 and 2022, and split up via a political affiliation metric in order to create two distinct politically-opposed user groups. Three main techniques are used to identify linguistic differences between the two groups: sentiment analysis, multiple correspondence analysis, and keyword analysis. The findings of this thesis are threefold. Firstly, text data collected on left- and right-leaning metrics are found to be an apt proxy for examining the language of climate change activism and denial. Secondly, climate change activists and deniers on Australian social media speak similarly in terms of grammatical style, but significantly differently in terms of lexical content. Thirdly and finally, triangulating between the three aforementioned methods provides a much clearer picture of language use. In this way, this thesis offers methodological innovations in examining online discourses, as well as important findings on the language use of the various parties to climate discourses on Australian Twitter.

open access journal Climate change is the single most pressing existential threat facing humanity, and while the scientific consensus is unassailable, how this knowledge is communicated to and circulated by the public suggests that – in the minds of the public, at least – the science is not yet settled. While there are many reasons that might underpin this perception, given the role of newspapers as conveyors of information in the public interest, how information about climate change is articulated becomes a matter of importance in terms of leveraging changes in consumer behaviour and voter priorities. In this paper, using below-the-line comments of two British national daily online newspapers by readers responding to articles on climate change related topics over a period of six years, from 2014 to 2019 inclusive, as corpora, I explore how the matter of climate change is understood and articulated by applying linguistic analyses to generate profiles characterising the discourse of each corpus. This study lends broad support to earlier research by demonstrating that the readership of the politically right-leaning newspaper tends towards an ‘attack discourse’ and general scepticism, even hostility, towards the scientific consensus, while the readership of the politically left leaning paper evidence support for the consensus. The paper concludes by considering some of the implications of these findings for scientific communications about climate change.

The past decade has seen increased anthropological attention to understandings of climate change not only as a biophysical phenomenon but also as a discourse that is traveling from international policy making platforms to the rest of the planet. The analysis of the uptake of climate change discourse falls under the emergent subfield of climate change reception studies. A few anthropological investigations identify themselves explicitly as reception studies; others only mention the term with little explanation. Our review discusses a fuller range of anthropological studies and ethnographies from related disciplines that treat climate change as a discursive reality, which is not independent from how it is intimated through close observations of the environment. The following themes emerged: language and expertise; place and vulnerability; modernity, morality and temporality; alterity and refusal. The review suggests that the interaction of observation and reception is still not well understood, and that there is scope for more systematic methodological and theoretical synthesis, taking lessons into account from geographies of reading and empirical hermeneutics. By exploring the hermeneutical problem of upholding scientific integrity while being open to other ways of knowing, climate change reception studies’ emancipatory potential lie in opening up knowledge spaces for multi-directional and democratic approaches to living (with) climate change. In closing, we propose an interdisciplinary research agenda highlighting the potential generativity of translation as an idiom for theory and praxis relating to how people come to know climate (change) – through both perceptual engagement with the natural world and interpretations of discursive manifestations.

Public health engagement in the communication, discussion, and development of climate change policies is essential for climate change policy decisions and discourse. This study examines how the existing governance approaches impact, enable, or constrain the inclusion, participation, and deliberation of public health stakeholders in the climate change policy discourse. Using the case study of the Canadian Province of Ontario, we conducted semi-structured, key informant interviews of public health (11) and non-public health (13) participants engaged in climate change policies in the province. The study results reveal that engagement and partnerships on climate change policies occurred within and across public health and non-public health organizations in Ontario. These engagements impacted public health&rsquo, s roles, decisions, mandate, and capacities beyond the climate change discourse, enabled access to funds, expertise, and new stakeholders, built relationships for future engagements, supported knowledge sharing, generation, and creation, and advanced public health interests in political platforms and decision making. However, public health&rsquo, s participation and deliberation were constrained by a fragmented sectoral approach, a lack of holistic inter-organizational structures and process, political and bureaucratic influences, irregular and unestablished communication channels for public health integration, and identities and culture focused on functions, mandates, biased ideologies, and a lack of clear commitment to engage public health. We conclude by providing practical approaches for integrating public health into climate change discourse and policymaking processes and advancing public health partnerships and collaborative opportunities.

Communication related to climate change as well as to its consequences constitutes a major challenge; all the more so since climate is a non-observable phenomenon, in stark contrast to the weather. In this perspective, language plays a crucial role in the conceptualisation and the framing of climate change discourse. In this paper, French and Norwegian data stemming from representative surveys in the two countries are compared. The participants are asked to answer an open-ended question concerning their conceptions of the expression “climate change”. The French data are collected from a survey undertaken in 2016 by ELIPSS at the Sciences Po (Institut d'études politiques de Paris). The Norwegian data are generated from a survey undertaken in 2013 by the Norwegian Citizen Panel/DIGSSCORE, at the University of Bergen. The answers are first analysed through a semi-automated structural topic modeling (STM) and then assessed through an in-depth manual evaluation. Further linguistic and enunciative analyses are undertaken of a selection of the respondents’ answer provided by the surveys. Given the difference in the energy mix of the two countries, different associations are expected to appear from the French and the Norwegian participants. At the same time, with the common global dimension of climate change, it seems reasonable to expect some similar associations concerning the reality of the changes, the consequences and the measures of adaptation or mitigation proposed or undertaken by the two countries. These issues are discussed within the theoretical frame of enunciation, including perspectives related to concession in a polyphonic perspective and to deontic modality.

Disertacija siekiama įvertinti pasirinkto socialinio tinklo viešojo diskurso potencialą demokratinių procesų palaikymui. Tirtos viešosios klimato kaitos diskusijos (komentarai) socialiniame tinkle Facebook. Empiriniams duomenims surinkti ir apdoroti naudojamas Diskurso kokybės indeksas: įvertinta, kaip analizuojamų komentarų kokybė atitinka idealųjį habermasiškąjį diskurso kokybės supratimą. Analizuojant ir interpretuojant surinktus duomenis, įvertintos Web 2.0 komunikacijos charakteristikos (kaip galimybės ir kliūtys svarstomosios demokratijos procesams palaikyti); taip pat aptarti klimato kaitos moksliniai ir politiniai aspektai (aktualizuojant rizikos komunikacijos ir deliberatyviosios demokratijos teorines prieigas). Tyrimo rezultatai atskleidė, jog analizuotų viešų komentarų kokybė yra nepakankama, kad galėtų daryti konkrečią įtaką politinių sprendimų priėmimo procesuose. Pagrindinės to priežastys: a) auditorijų poliarizacija; b) nesutarimais grįsta politinė diskusija; c) nepakankamas dalyvių mokslinis ir politinis išprusimas; d) nerimtas dalyvių nusiteikimas. The major purpose of this dissertation was to measure quality of preselected public discussions (in form of comments) generated on popular online social network Facebook. We used Discourse Quality Index as the main instrument to collect and analyze our empirical data. In particular, we measured how the quality of our discussions corresponded to the preconditions of Habermasian ideal discourse perception. In our analysis, we highlighted the role of Web 2.0 based online communications environments to support, promote or, possibly, neglect traditions and principles of deliberative democracy. Our results revealed that quality of the discussions we analyzed is not good enough; consequently, they cannot be considered by policymakers and have positive impact on decisions made. The main reasons of that are: a) audience polarization; b) dissensual political discourse; c) low participants’ scientific and political literacy; d) not serious or light role that participants undertake in the discourse.

The major purpose of this dissertation was to measure quality of preselected public discussions (in form of comments) generated on popular online social network Facebook. We used Discourse Quality Index as the main instrument to collect and analyze our empirical data. In particular, we measured how the quality of our discussions corresponded to the preconditions of Habermasian ideal discourse perception. In our analysis, we highlighted the role of Web 2.0 based online communications environments to support, promote or, possibly, neglect traditions and principles of deliberative democracy. Our results revealed that quality of the discussions we analyzed is not good enough; consequently, they cannot be considered by policymakers and have positive impact on decisions made. The main reasons of that are: a) audience polarization; b) dissensual political discourse; c) low participants’ scientific and political literacy; d) not serious or light role that participants undertake in the discourse. Disertacija siekiama įvertinti pasirinkto socialinio tinklo viešojo diskurso potencialą demokratinių procesų palaikymui. Tirtos viešosios klimato kaitos diskusijos (komentarai) socialiniame tinkle Facebook. Empiriniams duomenims surinkti ir apdoroti naudojamas Diskurso kokybės indeksas: įvertinta, kaip analizuojamų komentarų kokybė atitinka idealųjį habermasiškąjį diskurso kokybės supratimą. Analizuojant ir interpretuojant surinktus duomenis, įvertintos Web 2.0 komunikacijos charakteristikos (kaip galimybės ir kliūtys svarstomosios demokratijos procesams palaikyti); taip pat aptarti klimato kaitos moksliniai ir politiniai aspektai (aktualizuojant rizikos komunikacijos ir deliberatyviosios demokratijos teorines prieigas). Tyrimo rezultatai atskleidė, jog analizuotų viešų komentarų kokybė yra nepakankama, kad galėtų daryti konkrečią įtaką politinių sprendimų priėmimo procesuose. Pagrindinės to priežastys: a) auditorijų poliarizacija; b) nesutarimais grįsta politinė diskusija; c) nepakankamas dalyvių mokslinis ir politinis išprusimas; d) nerimtas dalyvių nusiteikimas.