Online communication on climatechange and climate politics: a literature review

Online Communication on Climate Change and Climate Politics. A Literature Review (Mike S. Schäfer) - Academia.edu

Lockwood criticizes that in blog aggregation sites such as ‘Wikio, four of the top 20 science blogs are skeptics. The most successful, WattsUpWiththat.com, the US-based blog of skeptic and former weatherman Anthony Watts, in July this year posted 646,024 page views (2.8 million since launch). It is in the top four of 3.4 million blogs using the free online blog authoring tool,Wordpress. Using the latest Nielsen Net Ratings data, even the most conservative estimate would give it over 300,000 monthly visits and a readership of over 31,000 users.’ (Ref 45, p. 3). Malone concludes that although online media seem to be ‘encouraging lots of people to express their opinions and share them widely, [they] are not very good at supporting evidence-based, logical deliberation’ (Ref 85, p. 20). Holmes’ online content analysis also shows a large ‘PR footprint of Exxon Mobil’ (Ref 124, p. 95), meaning that, for instance, many websites and weblogs mention scientists funded by the corporation without mentioning the link between both, which ‘is likely to be highly misleading for readers’ (Ref 124,p. 96).