Parallel routes from Copenhagen to Paris: climate discourse in climate sceptic and climate activist blogs

ABSTRACT

The Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 was a watershed moment in the international climate change discourse, reinforcing controversy and polarization between climate sceptics and climate activists. Simultaneously, the blogosphere, known as a place for polarized mobilization, became a proliferating forum for both camps. Building on Dryzek’s and Carvalho’s conceptualization of environmental discourse, this paper analyses how ideological polarization is grounded in climate sceptics’ and climate activists’ blogs between COP15 and COP21. We investigated ten climate sceptic and climate activist blogs accessible in the UK. Qualitative-quantitative analysis of 357 blog posts revealed contrasting ontological and epistemological worlds in the climate change controversy. Four storylines were identified in the climate sceptical discourse – ‘hoax’, ‘no scientific evidence’, ‘climate sceptical science’, and ‘injustice’ – and five storylines in the climate activist discourse – ‘action’, ‘social justice’, ‘disaster strikes’, ‘potential catastrophe’, and ‘opportunity’. Implications for policy, practice and future research are provided.

KEYWORDS:

• climate change
• climate discourse
• blogosphere
• climate scepticism
• UNFCCC
• Conferences of the Parties

1. Introduction

In the run-up to the 15^th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen in 2009, the public climate controversy flared up when hacked emails by climate scientists provided climate sceptics with the opportunity to question the integrity of climate science. The hacker uploaded the emails onto the climate science blog RealClimate (Schmidt, 2010). Shortly after, the climate sceptical blog WattsUpWithThat first broke the story and soon its readers dubbed the event ‘Climategate’, a term that caught on in mainstream media (Nerlich, 2010; Norton, 2010). ‘Climategate’ has had a long-lasting effect on public opinion on climate change and trust in scientists (Leiserowitz et al., 2013). This paper identifies the various storylines in the blog discourses of climate sceptics and climate activists between 2009-2015.

Especially since ‘Climategate’, the polarization of the climate discourse has been rooted in augmented cognitive and normative ambiguity. The uncertain situation provided an opening for pundits to advance their interpretations of the facts and appropriate action. Uncertainty increased when UNFCCC negotiators failed to meet their own timetable to reach a binding agreement in Copenhagen and instead settled on a roadmap towards an accord at the COP16 in Cancún in 2010, later postponed to the COP21 in Paris in 2015. Finally, on 12 December 2015, the Parties to the UNFCCC reached an accord on measures to prevent dangerous climate change (UNFCCC, 2015).

The COPs can be considered as critical discourse moments, as they affect public understandings of climate change by leveraging challenges to established discursive representations (Carvalho & Burgess, 2005). As such, COPs have attracted much scholarly attention. Bäckstrand and Lövbrand (2016) found that three overarching discourses – labeled green governmentality, ecological modernization, and civic environmentalism – have shaped how (global) climate governance was imagined and enacted during COP 17, 19, and 20. The increased media salience around climate change makes coverage of the events suitable material for identifying prevailing representations of climate change in traditional media. Christensen and Wormbs (2017) found that Swedish newspapers primarily framed COP15 and COP21 by deploying a ‘public accountability and governance’ frame. Kaiser and Rhomberg (2016) showed how German news articles framed COP17 by deploying ‘scepticism’ frames about the phenomenon of climate change and about climate science. Wozniak et al. (2017) analysed which professional groups communicating about COP19 and COP20 were most successful in having their visuals published in five countries’ news coverage. They showed that NGOs were most successful, by providing visuals about symbolic actions. Finally, Pan et al. (2019) demonstrated how the problem-solving frames in the United Kingdom, United States, and China’s media coverage of COP21 were significantly influenced by world power relations.

Only some recent studies have focused on online media content around the COPs. Hopke and Hestres (2018) studied visual framing of COP21 by analysing Twitter coverage. They showed how individual activists and movement organizations visually framed COP21 similarly, just like other media and climate stakeholders, except of the fossil fuel industry and trade associations. Painter et al. (2018) compared the content of online media organizations and traditional media, finding largely similar coverage across media outlets, apart from some variations in the volume of coverage and emphasis on themes. Finally, Arlt et al. (2018) identified receiving information on climate change from social media, active information seeking online, and interpersonal conversation as drivers of citizen participation in climate change discourse online around COP21. However, a detailed reconstruction of climate discourses between COP15 and COP21 in blogs is lacking, which is problematic since each platform shapes different climate change communication (Pearce et al., 2019). Hence, the current research aims to reconstruct blog coverage of the COPs between Copenhagen (2009) and Paris (2015) as focal events and critical discourse moments for the articulation of climate controversy.

Climate change blogs are ‘websites that primarily and frequently produce content about climate change with dated entries in a reverse chronological order and possibly a comment section’ (van Eck et al., 2019, p. 2). Blog posts typically comprise 300-600 words (Shah, n.d.). Climate change blog posts predominantly provide opinionated written content by bloggers with different backgrounds. The climate change blogosphere is generally polarized between bloggers that either support or reject the mainstream scientific position on climate change (Elgesem et al., 2015). While both climate sceptical and climate mainstream bloggers follow similar journalistic norms (e.g. truth, novelty, dramatization), their operationalization of these norms results in polarized content (van Eck et al., 2019). Other polarization dynamics are also visible in the usage patterns of blog audiences. Audience members with high climate change risk perceptions primarily visit climate mainstream blogs while audience members with low risk perceptions frequently visit climate sceptical blogs (van Eck et al., 2020). On average, blog readers visit climate mainstream blogs 18 days per month and on climate sceptical blogs nine days per month (van Eck et al., 2020), which reflects a high level of engagement with climate change among this dedicated audience (Lewandowsky et al., 2013).

Blogs form an integral part of climate sceptics’ communication strategy and thereby amplify the dissemination of climate sceptical views (Lewandowsky et al., 2019). Climate sceptical blog content has therefore attracted scholarly attention. Research has shown that climate sceptical blogs questioned the science during the ‘Climategate’ debate, using a paradoxical mixture of religious metaphors and demand for ‘better’ science (Nerlich, 2010). Climate sceptical bloggers engage with science by criticizing the conduct of climate scientists or by directly challenging the scientific mainstream (Sharman, 2014), e.g. disregarding scientific evidence of Arctic sea-ice loss and polar bear vulnerability (Harvey et al., 2018). Another type of climate scepticism in blogs focuses on the discussion of climate change politics (especially U.S. politics), besides discussions about climate science (Elgesem et al., 2015).

In contrast, less scholarly attention is given to blogs that support the mainstream scientific position. Research showed that the climate mainstream is more concerned with climate politics than science, discussing variegated topics such as ‘energy’ or ‘development issues’ (Elgesem et al., 2015). Besides, representations of the future in English-language blogs on climate change were more often related to sustainability and positive, value-laden characterizations than gloom-and-doom perspectives (Fløttum et al., 2014). Lastly, the main content of ‘green’ blogs is concerned with the environmental impact of climate change, with the depletion of natural resources as the most prominent issue (Luck & Ginanti, 2013).

Few studies have systematically compared climate sceptical blogs with climate communication in pro-environmental blogs. A study of the Russian blogosphere identified four discursive categories (conspiracies of climate change, climate change impact, political games of climate change, online (anti-)environmentalism) along which ‘climate activist’ and ‘climate denier’ bloggers framed the same topics in different ways (Poberezhskaya, 2018). Previous research (Carvalho, 2000; Dryzek, 2013; Feindt & Oels, 2005; Hajer, 1995; Leipold et al., 2019) has shown how environmental policy has been structurally constrained by discursive constructions of what is considered as reality (ontology) and knowledge (epistemology). Yet, a comparative discourse analysis in the English-language blogosphere is virtually absent. Such research is crucial though, since the reconstruction of the discursive realities of these competing online camps explains how support for or resistance against certain climate policies is rooted in competing discursive constructions of reality.

Therefore, we aim to analyse ten climate change blogs that were popular in the UK between COP15 and COP21. Due to the political nature of the COPs, we are interested in blogs that articulate competing political reasoning around these events. Hence, we focus our analysis on five climate sceptical blogs and five climate activist blogs. We define ‘climate sceptic blogs’ as online content providers that openly reject the mainstream scientific position on climate change. ‘Climate activist blogs’ actively campaign for climate action as their main content.

Climate scepticism is mostly prevalent in Western countries (Whitmarsh & Capstick, 2018). The focus on the UK is motivated by the shift in British policy discourse from applause for its leading role in innovative climate change policy to a widespread questioning of climate policies (Gillard, 2016). The UK was the first to set legally binding emission reduction targets by adopting the Climate Change Act 2008 and signed the Paris Agreement in 2016 (UNFCCC, 2015). However, after 2010, climate politics became more partisan, as the Conservative party became divided over the issue, effectively ending the consensus politics (Carter, 2014). While some parts of the British public actively promoted climate action, others sympathized with climate sceptic positions, not least the UK Independence Party which enjoyed continuously growing support (Carter, 2014). Thus, the UK government’s increasingly ambivalent climate policy and polarization of public opinion reflect the country’s deepening climate controversy during the period of observation. We expect that the climate-themed blogs in our sample reflect and possibly augment this polarization.

Our goal is to understand how ideological polarization in the climate change blogosphere is grounded in the discursive constructions of reality of climate sceptics and climate activists. More specifically, by adopting and refining the general discourse analytical framework of Dryzek (2013) and Carvalho's (2000) conceptualization of environmental discourse, this paper aims to reconstruct the competing ontological and epistemological constructions of issues around the COPs between 2009 and 2015. By focussing on this specific segment of the climate change controversy, we expect to understand in particular the interface between competing worlds of knowledge (climate change acceptance vs. scepticism) and competing political projects (support for or resistance against multilateral climate agreements) as communicated in online blogs.

2. Analytical framework

Various approaches to discourse analysis ‘differ with regard to their ontological and epistemological premises as well as with regard to their methodology’ (Feindt & Oels, 2005, p. 163). They have different purposes, different concepts of language and ask different questions (Doulton & Brown, 2009; Leipold et al., 2019). Leipold et al. (2019, p. 449) distinguish between five schools or approaches of discourse analysis: (1) Foucault-inspired discourse analysis and governmentality approaches; (2) argumentative and deliberative discourse approaches; (3) post-Marxist and linguistic approaches that focus on the critique of ideology or hegemony; (4) sociology of knowledge approaches; and (5) narrative approaches. We situate our research in the field of argumentative and deliberative discourse analysis. This tradition is influenced by Habermas’ understanding of discourse (Habermas, 1984). A key theme with regard to environmental policy issues is ‘the possibility of political deliberation in the face of competing meta-discourses about the environment’ (Leipold et al., 2019, p. 448), in this case climate sceptical and climate activist discourse.

Accordingly, we build on Dryzek's (2013) definition of discourses as a shared way of apprehending the world. Dryzek (2013) established four analytical categories to explain competing environmental discourses: the basic entities whose existence is recognized or constructed, assumptions about natural relationships, agents and their motives, and key metaphors and rhetorical devices. Dryzek’s approach allows to analyse both environmental and anti-environmental discourses and aims to avoid the ‘narrowness of strict linguistic analysis and the broad generalizations that characterize ideological analysis’ (Doulton & Brown, 2009, p. 192). In addition, normative judgments are a salient aspect in climate change discourses. They receive special attention in Carvalho's (2000) approach (which is inspired by the work of i.a. Fairclough, 1995; Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Van Dijk, 1985), a textual analysis that includes the following analytical categories: (1) surface descriptors and structural organization; (2) objects; (3) actors; (4) language and rhetoric; (5) discursive strategies and processes; and (6) ideological standpoints.

Combining these analytical elements of Dryzek's (2013) and Carvalho’s (2000) approaches, Doulton and Brown (2009) developed an analytical framework for the comparative analysis of multiple environmental discourses which proved useful in identifying discourses in newspapers. To our knowledge, the framework has not yet been applied to the blogosphere or another online venue.

In our research, each selected blog was analysed along the following categories, which were slightly adjusted to tailor it to blog posts instead of newspaper articles:

1. Basic Entities Recognized or Constructed represent the ontology of the discourse; this includes how climate change-related phenomena are understood. We have categorized the basic entities that were recognized or constructed as belonging to either a social, natural, technological, or transcendent ontology.

2. Assumptions about Natural Relationships include the causes and consequences of changes in the climate and the scale of impacts of climate change.

3. Representations of Agents and their Motives determine who the key actors are and characterize their intentions, thereby framing them as heroes, villains, victims, or ignorant actors.

4. Key Metaphors and other Rhetorical Devices are deployed to persuade readers by putting a situation in a particular light. We have categorized the devices that were recognized or constructed as devices related to science, the conferences, judgments about climate change, and commitments of actors.

5. Normative Judgments propose explicitly what should be done, and by whom, and the extent to which issues should be given priority.

Besides, we also coded the usual surface descriptors, i.e. the website, author, date, section, word count, title of the blog post, and whether it is cross-posted.

3. Methodology

In 2015, the blogs were selected in three steps using purposive sampling in order to create a sample that meets the research goals (Etikan et al., 2016). First, we entered the following search terms in Google: ‘climate change blog UK’, ‘climate change NGO UK’, ‘climate change blog NGO UK’, ‘climate skeptic blog UK’, ‘climate skeptic blog’, and ‘climate skeptic’. Google was deployed as it was the most popular search engine in the UK at the time of research. Second, the most frequently listed websites were consequently selected according to the following inclusion criteria: they (1) have a blog section, (2) are accessible in the UK, and (3) have a sceptic or activist agenda respectively. The climate sceptic blogs selected were: Global Climate Scam, WattsUpWithThat, climate-sceptic, Dr Roy Spencer, and Bishop Hill. As climate activist blogs, WWF UK, Greenpeace UK, Friends of the Earth UK, Climate Action Network and Oxfam UK were included in the analysis. Third and lastly, the climate sceptical blogs did not only include blogs owned by British bloggers. Therefore, the climate sceptical blog selection was presented to an expert on climate scepticism in the UK who corroborated that these blogs were established climate sceptic blogs with a popular following in the UK. See Supplement I for an overview of the profiles of the selected blogs.

Blog posts within each of the ten blogs were selected according to the following criteria:

1. The blog post was published within one week before or after or during an annual COP between 2009 and 2015. It can be assumed that these month-long periods were critical discourse moments with increased media salience around climate change and climate politics (Carvalho & Burgess, 2005).

2. The blog post featured in its title or lead either

   • at least one of the following generic terms: ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’ or ‘greenhouse effect’; or

   • a term that referred to the conference: ‘COP’, ‘climate summit’, ‘UN climate conference’, ‘Copenhagen’, ‘Cancùn’, ‘Durban’, ‘Doha’, ‘Warsaw’, ‘Lima’, or ‘Paris’; or

   • a term that reflected the controversy: ‘skeptic’, ‘sceptic’, ‘conspiracy’, ‘hoax’, ‘propaganda’, ‘climate science’.

The analysis was limited to written text and excluded audio-visual media. Blog posts that only consisted of audio-visual media were therefore eliminated from the sample. After removal of four duplicates, the selection process resulted in a corpus of 357 blog posts (253 climate sceptic and 104 climate activist, see Table 1). The inclusion criteria delivered an appropriate number of blog posts for analysis to allow an assessment of discursive differences in the climate blogosphere between Copenhagen and Paris.

Table 1. Overview of number of blogs posts per blog.

Climate sceptical blogs	N
Global Climate Scam	32
WattsUpWithThat	191
climate-skeptic	5
Dr Roy Spencer	5
Bishop Hill	20
Subtotal	253
Climate activist blogs	N
WWF UK	20
Greenpeace UK	25
Friends of the Earth UK	36
Climate Action Network	17
Oxfam UK	6
Subtotal	104
Total	357

The blog posts were coded, using the software ATLAS.ti. Within the six main analytical categories (the deductive element of the research design), an inductive coding strategy was adopted. Unit of analysis was the entire blog post for the main analytical category basic entities recognized or constructed, and sentences for the other categories. All blog posts were first coded and recoded by the first author in order to develop and refine codes within each main analytical category. Subsequently, all blog posts were independently coded again by the main coder, while a second coder analysed a random subsample of 90 blog posts. Both coders had three intermediate joint rounds to improve the reliability of the coding system, each resulting in further adjustments to the codebook to include more specific agreements on the coding strategy. After the fourth round, the coders had reached full consensus on the codebook and how codes should be applied to carry out a reliable content analysis. Remaining inconsistencies were mostly due to the fact that coders failed to apply codes, given the wide range of 154 codes, the large number of blog posts, and the fact that statements could be ambiguous, which made it difficult to consistently apply the coding category ‘rhetorical devices’. See Supplement II for the final codebook.

After coding, a descriptive statistical analysis identified the frequencies of the codes, which represent the discourse elements. The findings were synthesized by identifying the most prominent storylines for both the sceptic and activist camp. We ran additional analyses to test whether the discourses of individual blogs were largely consistent with the overarching discourse of climate sceptical and activist blogs. The findings were externally validated through semi-structured feedback interviews with two climate sceptic and two climate activist bloggers.

4. Results

4.1. Climate sceptical blog discourse

Four storylines were identified in the climate sceptical blog discourse, labeled ‘hoax’, ‘no scientific evidence’, ‘climate sceptical science’, and ‘injustice’. Please see Table 2 for an overview of the storylines and accompanying results according to the analytical dimensions of the framework.

Table 2. Storylines in climate sceptic blogs.

Climate sceptical storylines	Basic entities recognized	Assumptions about natural relationships	Agents and their motives	Metaphors and rhetorical devices	Normative judgments
Hoax	Conspiracy Legitimacy and illegitimacy	ACC does not exist	Villains: scientists, politicians, and media supporting ACC theory Heroes: politicians, media, and climate sceptics rejecting ACC theory	Science is misleading No support for climate action Climategate Climate mainstream spreads alarmism and hysteria Climate change is a religion, imagination, fairy tale, joke Climate change is not dangerous COPs are not well organized and a failure	No explicit normative judgments COPs lack legitimacy (implicit)
No scientific evidence	Science as business Mainstream science	No link between CO2 and global warming Global warming is not human-caused Weather is not climate Doubts about sea level rise, glacier melting rates, and ice cap sizes	Villains and ignorant: scientists, supporting ACC theory	Models are unreliable Mainstream science is not sound There is no scientific consensus IPCC reports are flawed	Science needs to be revised
Climate sceptical science	Scientific evidence that supports climate scepticism	Natural variability Global warming pause Global cooling Other factors than CO2 affect changes in the climate Recovering sea ice Species populations	Heroes: scientists rejecting ACC theory	Climate sceptical science is sound Use of scientific jargon Frequent references to academic credentials	No explicit normative judgments Academic dissidents deserve to be heard (implicit)
Injustice	Unethical environmental campaigns and protests Unethical costly climate change policies	No explicit assumptions about natural relationships	Victims: children, general public, developed countries, and developing countries Villains: climate activists and politicians	Fear-mongering and violence Unethical and immoral	No explicit normative judgments Climate campaigns and policies are immoral (implicit)

Storylines ordered by dominance.

Storyline 1: ‘Hoax’

‘For decades, the climate debate has been obfuscated by cherry-picking, spin-doctoring and scare-mongering by the UN’s IPCC and other climate alarmists, including the environmental movement and mainstream media.’ (Labohm, WattsUpWithThat, 2010)

The hoax storyline constructs Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) as a conspiracy of scientists, politicians, and mainstream media. Congruent with this reasoning, the legitimacy of the COPs is constantly being questioned. This storyline was dominant in the climate sceptical discourse each year, but especially during COPs in Copenhagen in 2009 and Paris in 2015. The conduct of these negotiations to find a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol was assessed with suspicion. The COPs were framed as not well organized and a failure. In 2009 and 2015, politicians, media, and climate sceptics were more frequently presented as heroes than in other years. From 2009 to 2011, Climategate received much attention, as sceptics presented it as proof that mainstream scientists were conspiring. Correspondingly, politicians, mainstream scientists, climate activists, and in 2009 also the media that supported the theory of ACC and/or climate action were regularly portrayed as villains, e.g. as ‘enviro-zombs’, ‘alarmists’, or ‘climate crusaders’. Throughout the observation period, sceptics consistently framed climate change as either a religion, imagination, fairy tale, or joke and as an issue for which there is little support. Simultaneously, and especially in 2015, sceptics framed climate change as an issue not to worry about, as it was not dangerous. In line with this finding, scientists, politicians, and media supporting ACC theory were portrayed as villains that spread unjustified alarmism and hysteria. Remarkably, explicit normative judgments were surprisingly rare in the climate sceptic blogs throughout the years. However, implicitly the judgment was made that the COPs lack legitimacy.

Storyline 2: ‘No scientific evidence’

‘In any event, I believe that the scientific community’s confidence that climate change is now mostly human-caused is seriously misplaced.’ (Roy Spencer, Dr Roy Spencer, 2009)

Much of the climate sceptical discourse was devoted to contesting the science on ACC. The mainstream science was contested by challenging the link between CO₂ and global warming. Throughout the years, sceptics also often discussed the assertion that extreme weather events did not necessarily reflect climate change. The sceptics often referred to the ‘Gore Effect’, an allusion to unseasonably cold weather during events organized by climate activists, especially those visited by Al Gore. Sceptics also asserted their doubts about sea level rise, glacier melting rates, and ice cap sizes. In 2009, 2013, and 2015, the mainstream science was in particular framed as not sound and failing to provide evidence of ACC. These peaks reflect the COPs in Copenhagen and Paris and the intense responses to the various parts of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). Mainstream scientists who ‘got it wrong’ were portrayed unfavorably or as ignorant each year. The very few explicit normative judgments that we found mostly focused on the opinion that the science needs to be revisited, with fluctuating frequency over the years. For example, Roy Spencer 2009) wrote on his blog: ‘The computer codes for the climate models now being used by the IPCC should be made available to other researchers for independent testing and experimentation.’

Storyline 3: ‘Climate sceptical science’

‘It has been said by some politicians and journalists that ‘sceptics’ have used the ‘pause’ to undermine climate science. Actually there are a great many scientists and others working hard to understand the ‘pause’. The ‘Pause’ IS climate science.’ (David Whitehouse, WattsUpWithThat, 2013)

While the previous storyline – ‘no scientific evidence’ – centres on the lack of scientific evidence for ACC theory, the ‘climate sceptical science’ storyline focuses on scientific evidence that supports climate scepticism. Here, instead of debunking mainstream science, climate sceptics put forward their own understandings of the science. They argue that changes in the climate could be attributed to natural variability and contend that the climate system is too complex to simply attribute changes in the climate to CO_2. Factors such as solar radiation, fluctuations in stratospheric water vapour, and ocean heat uptake are emphasized. From 2009 till 2012, sceptics more frequently discussed whether the surface air temperature was increasing. In 2013, the sceptical bloggers started to write about a ‘global warming pause’ around the release of a part of AR5 of the IPCC, and concluded that the world surface air temperature was no longer increasing. The actors that were most frequently portrayed as heroes in this storyline were scientists rejecting ACC theory. Throughout the years, but especially in 2013 during the ‘global warming pause’ discussion, and in 2015, climate sceptics framed their science as sound, which was reinforced by their use of scientific jargon and frequent references to academic credentials. Lastly, again no explicit normative judgments were made in this storyline, yet, implicitly climate sceptics conveyed that climate sceptic academics deserve to be heard.

Storyline 4: ‘Injustice’

‘I believe that this whole global warming/climate change issue is no more than a monumental scam perpetrated by the affluent nations to protect their economic supremacy, regardless of the effects on the many millions of poor and disadvantaged populations of Africa and elsewhere’. (Alexander, WattsUpWithThat, 2011)

While the ‘injustice’ storyline was not the most prominent storyline in the climate sceptical discourse, the sceptics discussed how environmental campaigns and protests were unethical and climate change policies were too costly. Children and the general public were being portrayed as victims of unethical environmental campaigns and protests, whereas climate activists were being portrayed as the villains responsible for this injustice. In addition, from 2011 onward, the general public, developed countries, and occasionally developing countries were presented as victims, when climate sceptics highlighted the alleged unfairly high contributions to the Green Climate Fund.

4.2. Climate activist blog discourse

Five storylines were identified in the climate activist blog discourse, labeled ‘action’, ‘social justice’, ‘disaster strikes’, ‘potential catastrophe’, and ‘opportunity’. Please see Table 3 for an overview of the storylines and accompanying results according to the analytical dimensions of the framework.

Table 3. Storylines in climate activist blogs.

Climate activist storylines	Basic entities recognized	Assumptions about natural relationships	Agents and their motives	Metaphors and rhetorical devices	Normative judgments
Action	Negotiation, legislation, and regulation Campaigns and demonstrations	CO2 emissions cause climate change Climate change impacts	Heroes: general public, climate activists, businesses, scientists, politicians, and nation states that are acting upon climate change Villains: businesses, politicians, and nation states that are not acting upon climate change	FAB (fair, ambitious, and binding agreement) Political manoeuvres Empty promises Effective negotiation management crucial There is a scientific consensus Effective protests and campaigns Support for climate action Frequent use of ‘we’	We need climate action We need a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol We need a fair, ambitious, and binding agreement Global temperature should not rise more than 2 degrees Global temperature should not rise more than 1.5 degrees We need commitments on finance We need political commitment and leadership We need to work together
Social justice	Complex socio-ecological relationships Power relations	Climate change is human-caused Climate change affects all Climate change affects the most vulnerable Local and regional level impact	Victims: nation states that are suffering the consequences of climate change, the general public, and climate activists Villains: businesses, politicians, and nation states that are not acting upon climate change	Ethically and morally right	We need climate justice Nature should be protected The ones impacted by climate change should not suffer more Those causing climate change should help those affected by climate change We need a loss and damage mechanism
Disaster strikes	State of the earth Crisis Adaptation	Typhoon Haiyan Increasing surface air temperature Extreme weather events Sea ice vanishes Oceans acidify Rainforests suffer dieback Declining species populations Moving vegetation zones Regional level impact	Victims: nation states that are suffering the consequences of climate change, general public Villains: businesses, politicians, and nation states that are not acting upon climate change	Climate change is already here Climate change is dangerous Urgency and irreversibility Effective time management is crucial	We need to act upon climate change now
Potential catastrophe	Future impacts of climate change Looming crisis Mitigation	Increasing surface air temperature Extreme weather events Sea ice vanishes Oceans acidify Rainforests suffer dieback Declining species populations Moving vegetation zones	Victims: future generations	Climate change will become even more dangerous Urgency to create willpower There is hope, stay optimistic Effective time management is crucial	We need to act upon climate change urgently
Opportunity	Economy Clean technology International negotiations and agreements	CO2 emissions cause climate change	Businesses can benefit from acting upon climate change The victims of climate change can benefit from clean technologies Everyone who is a victim of climate change benefits from a good agreement	Economic benefits of adaptation and mitigation There is hope	We need to invest in renewable energies in particular

Storylines ordered by dominance.

Storyline 5: ‘Action’

‘Critically, they [political leaders] must take decisions which ensure the Green Climate Fund will be fully operational by 2013, and they must start to mobilise the long-term finance rich countries have promised to fill it.’ (Gore, Oxfam UK, 2011)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ‘action’ storyline was the most profound storyline identified in the climate activist blog discourse. Climate activist bloggers mostly wrote about the ongoing politics during the COP negotiations and about the campaigns and demonstrations surrounding the formal negotiations. In particular during the negotiations in Copenhagen and Paris, much of the discourse was devoted to this storyline, but also during the intermediate negotiations in Durban, Warsaw, and Lima. This storyline narrates a world of engagement through campaigns and events for binding international commitments and climate action, where climate science is mostly taken for granted and hence backgrounded. The causes of the phenomenon were presented only in the context of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas emissions and the need for their reduction. The climate activist bloggers’ discourse often constituted a self-congratulatory representation by frequently portraying themselves as heroes. Especially in 2009 and 2015, during the climate negotiations in Copenhagen and Paris, politicians and nation states were either portrayed as heroes or as villains, depending on their stances towards a climate treaty. In 2013, the most frequent type of heroes were mainstream scientists, mostly in connection with the publication of AR5. In 2015, the general public and businesses were often presented as heroes, with examples of actors who already take responsibility and act upon climate change. Businesses are sometimes presented as both potential heroes and villains if they did not take action. Especially in 2009 and 2015, during the climate negotiations in Copenhagen and Paris, rhetorical devices often referred directly to the ongoing climate negotiations, for example by advocating an ‘FAB agreement’ – fair, ambitious, and binding. They urged for commitments by presenting evidence of public concern, empty promises as irresponsible, and effective negotiation management as crucial. For example, an alliteration-saturated comment by Jossc (2009) on Greenpeace UK contrasts the commitment of grassroots activists with the inaction and neglect displayed by political incumbents:

‘As we all try to come to terms with the historic failure of nerve and vision that paralysed the Copenhagen climate summit, the response of Greenpeace members around the world has been fast and focused: expressing their condemnation of world leaders unwilling or unable to lead in a time of crisis, and demanding the release of the four Greenpeace activists who face spending Christmas in jail after making a peaceful protest at the Danish Queen’s dinner for Heads of State.’

Overall, climate activist bloggers gave much more explicit normative guidance than climate sceptic bloggers. The explicit normative judgments in the climate activist blogs were mostly related to the support of serious regulations and commitments. Over the entire period, the activists pushed for binding targets and effective action to reduce GHG emissions. Whereas the climate activist bloggers first demanded that global temperatures should not rise more than 2 degrees, in 2015 they advocated for 1.5 degrees. They also called for long-term commitments on finance and for political commitment and leadership, especially in 2011, when the Green Climate Fund was established. And especially in 2015, climate activist blogs explicitly demanded that ‘we need to work and campaign together’.

Storyline 6: ‘Social justice’

‘It’s already obvious to me that the proud history of South Africa’s social justice movement is going to be keenly felt on the streets of Durban and inside the conference centre. In fact, this meeting feels different precisely because it’s in Africa. After all, climate change is a huge threat to this continent and the outrage is more pronounced because Africans aren’t responsible. You can really feel that here.’ (bens, Greenpeace, 2011)

Throughout the years, climate activist bloggers consistently constructed climate change as a social justice matter, a storyline in which responsibility was a central component. Graspable impacts of climate change were highlighted. In comparison to other years, in 2015, the climate activist bloggers extensively featured the local consequences of climate change already experienced by people around the globe. The general public and developing countries were frequently portrayed as victims of climate inaction. Businesses, politicians, and nation states were blamed for harming everyone who is suffering the consequences of climate change due to their inaction. Acting upon climate change was framed as a moral cause. Climate activists demanded climate justice and no more suffering, which in their opinion could be achieved when those causing climate change would help those affected by climate change. In terms of legislation, climate activists advocated a loss and damage mechanism and demanded that nature should be protected.

Storyline 7: ‘Disaster strikes’

‘But it's especially galling that this is happening when Typhoon Haiyan in The Philippines has given the world such a stark reminder of the tragic costs of not acting to stop climate change. At the latest round of international climate change talks, which just ended in Poland, The Philippines representative issued an urgent plea for the world to act. But rich industrialised nations once more blocked meaningful progress.’ (Hume, Friends of the Earth UK, 2013)

In the ‘disaster strikes’ storyline of the climate activist discourse, the adverse consequences of climate change that are already happening are discussed to alert the readers that a crisis is unfolding in front of their eyes. Over the years, the activists highlighted variegated negative and dangerous consequences of ACC, e.g. increasing surface air temperature, sea ice vanishing, oceans acidifying, rainforests suffering dieback, declining species populations, and moving vegetation zones. Moreover, extreme weather events were attributed to climate change, e.g. typhoon Haiyan that hit the Philippines in 2013, to underline the importance of acting upon climate change. Congruent with the social justice storyline, the nation states and general public suffering the consequences of climate change were portrayed as the victims and the businesses, politicians, and nation states were portrayed as the villains. The climate activist bloggers framed climate change as already here and dangerous. They aimed at generating a sense of urgency. The tone of this storyline was predominantly pessimistic. And especially in 2015, climate activist blogs explicitly demanded that ‘we need to act upon climate change now’.

Storyline 8: ‘Potential catastrophe’

‘If we don’t [act], we face a future world where we either have to adapt – or succumb – to further heat waves, flooding, intense storms and sea level rise.’ (Nussbaum, WWF UK, 2013)

Whereas the ‘disaster strikes’ storyline was much more focused on the here and now, the ‘potential catastrophe’ storyline emphasizes the future impacts of climate change. Future generations are portrayed as the victims. The tone of this storyline was considerably more optimistic than the ‘disaster strikes’ storyline. From 2014 onwards, this optimistic tone dominated the pessimistic tone. In this storyline, climate activist bloggers primarily demanded that ‘we need to act fast’. Acting upon climate change is framed as a matter of effective time management, especially in 2015. The potential catastrophe was narrated as an urgent warning.

Storyline 9: ‘Opportunity’

‘There is plenty of scope for ‘win-win’ solutions which tackle climate change as well as creating jobs and bringing down poverty. For example, our report Cutting Carbon Emissions in Welsh Homes identified how targeting home improvements at the poorest quality houses in Wales would slash energy bills, cut fuel poverty by 40%, reduce our impact on climate change and create thousands of jobs.’ (McQuade, WWF UK, 2013)

While the ‘opportunity’ storyline was not dominant in the climate activist blog discourse, bloggers repeatedly discussed the opportunities for the economy of adopting an international agreement and acting upon climate change (e.g. by adopting clean technologies). In 2013, the economic benefits of the Green Climate Fund were highlighted. In 2015, the readership was assured that businesses could benefit from acting upon climate change. In addition, the victims of climate change could benefit from clean technologies. Overall, the ‘opportunity’ storyline emphasised a sense of hope.

5. Discussion

5.1. Contributions to the literature

The postponement of an agreement about a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol at the COP15 in Copenhagen opened a period of extended struggle over the future climate policy regime. This period coincided with the rise of the climate change blogosphere as an important venue for political discussion that is particularly prone to processes of audience segmentation and polarization (Elgesem et al., 2015). Our goal was to understand how ideological polarization in the climate change blogosphere is grounded in the discursive construction of reality of climate sceptic and climate activist discourses used by bloggers around COP15 and COP21, complementing earlier research on climate discourses and frames in the blogosphere (e.g. Elgesem et al., 2015; Sharman, 2014) and around COPs (Hopke & Hestres, 2018; Painter et al., 2018). Overall, in our analysis of 357 blog posts we found significant differences between climate sceptic and activist blogs along all dimensions of environmental and anti-environmental discourse identified in the analytical frameworks of Dryzek (2013) and Carvalho (2000). Below we will discuss our most significant findings.

The climate sceptical blog discourse consisted of four storylines, labeled ‘hoax’, ‘no scientific evidence’, ‘climate sceptical science’, and ‘injustice’. In the ‘hoax’ and ‘no scientific evidence’ storylines, climate sceptic bloggers presented an often conspirational, remote world of dirty politics, dubious science, partial media, and unwanted treaties, thereby often reproducing the playbook of a well-established climate denial discourse (Dunlap & McCright, 2010). The fact that we identified these two storylines is unsurprising, given that academic scholarship has found similar storylines in other media analyses. For example, Painter and Ashe (2012) found that in US print media between 2007-10, climate sceptical discourse was mostly constituted of attacking the scientific legitimacy of climate change policy proposals. In addition, Poberezhskaya (2018) identified the discursive category ‘conspiracies of climate change’ in the Russian climate change blogosphere.

However, our research also unveils a storyline in the climate sceptical blog discourse about ‘climate sceptical science’. Academic scholarship often characterizes climate sceptics as individuals who ´question’, ‘doubt’, and are ‘sceptical’ about science (see e.g. Kaiser & Rhomberg, 2016; Painter & Ashe, 2012), suggesting a general anti-science attitude. However, this research shows that while climate sceptical bloggers were indeed critical of ACC mainstream science, they did not generally display an anti-science attitude, but partly promoted a ‘different’ type of science. It is of course debatable to what extent climate sceptical science holds up to academic standards of ‘good scientific practice’. However, some climate sceptical bloggers were concerned with providing and reviewing scientific research. Hence, our research suggests that the climate sceptic discourse cannot simply be marked as anti-science. An interesting research direction would therefore be investigating what concepts of science are behind these discursive representations. Moreover, since blogs offer a space for long-form content without gate-keeping control, the climate change blogosphere is arguably the perfect venue for climate sceptics to pounder on more or less scientific ideas that support climate scepticism and discuss these with others in the climate sceptical network. This argument could provide an explanation for why blogs form an integral part of climate sceptics’ communication strategy (Lewandowsky et al., 2019).

The climate activist discourse comprised five storylines labeled ‘action’, ‘social justice’, ‘disaster strikes’, ‘potential catastrophe’, and ‘opportunity’. In the prevailing ‘action’ storyline, climate activist blogs linked climate policy to a world of political engagement, campaigns, and events and thereby align with discourses in global climate governance and other online media that give substantial attention to grass-root activism and protests (Bäckstrand & Lövbrand, 2016; Christensen & Wormbs, 2017; Painter et al., 2018; Wozniak et al., 2017). Indeed, the fact that climate activist bloggers pushed for a ‘FAB agreement’ signaled their connection to a network of environmental groups that has rallied around this term since COP15 (McGregor, 2011). Moreover, this and the other storylines are similar to the discourses that Doulton and Brown (2009) identified in their research using the same analytical framework.

Whereas it is obvious that the climate activist blog discourse was geared at creating a world of engagement, it does not per se mean that these bloggers were effective in doing so. What is new about the climate activist blog findings is that it shows how climate activist bloggers have learned to communicate more effectively about climate change throughout the years. Climate activist bloggers exchanged their predominantly pessimistic tone, as observed in the ‘disaster strikes’ storyline’, for more hopeful narratives, as observed in the ‘potential catastrophe’ and ‘opportunity’ storylines. This finding reflects that bloggers learned to communicate more effectively, as conveying a lack of hope may undermine motivations for actions to solve the problem (Marlon et al., 2019). Additionally, activist bloggers emphasised how the impacts of climate change are already affecting people around the globe. Their shift in 2015 within the ‘social justice’ storyline to focusing on local impacts, meaning that bloggers invoked place identity in their communication, shows a strategy that generally enhances desired behaviour changes (Moser, 2014).

In relation to this latter finding, Schlosberg and Collins (2014, p. 359) confirm that grassroots social justice discourse focuses on ‘local impacts and experiences, inequitable vulnerabilities, the importance of community voice, and demands for community sovereignty and functioning’. They explain that this discourse is different from the academic social justice discourse – that has a more normative character – and an NGO elite social justice discourse which focuses on influencing policymaking. Our results show, however, that the climate activist blog discourse gave much normative guidance regarding policymaking. In other words, all three forms of social justice discourse – grassroots, academic, and NGO – were present in the activist blog discourse, which is likely explained by the fact that both NGO staff and grassroot activists were among the bloggers.

Further, Schlosberg and Collins (2014, p. 359) rightly note that ‘environmental justice is a major movement and organizing discourse in the environmental politics arena’. While it was unsurprising that our research showed that the climate activist blog discourse contained a ‘social justice’ storyline, it was more surprising to see that the climate sceptic blog discourse also included an ‘injustice’ storyline. For example, both sides of the debate portrayed developing countries as the victim of the fight over climate change. The climate sceptical ‘injustice’ storyline, however, widely refrained from explicit normative judgments but aimed to sow doubts about the morality of climate policies, thereby contributing to polarization. An interesting future research direction would be tracing the sceptical treatment of justice and injustice storylines and assessing their effects.

Lastly, both discourses constitute a self-congratulatory representation, which was identified through the ‘heroes’, ‘villains’, and ‘victims’ element of our framework. This finding is not surprising in itself, but shows that this theoretical refinement of the framework is useful for identifying patterns of mobilization in discourse, and thereby adds to Dryzek's (2013) framework.

Overall, by for the first time conducting a Dryzek and Carvalho-inspired systematic discourse analysis on blogs, we show how ideological polarization is grounded in the discursive realities of climate sceptical and climate activist bloggers. Both camps describe the issue in diverging terms, recognize different basic entities, disagree on natural relationships, assign differing motives to the key agents, and make different use of explicit normative guidance. Especially analysing the climate sceptical blog discourse rendered some unexpected results, which call for a more nuanced characterization and might allow for more effective climate communication towards this camp.

5.2. Limitations

The research has limitations that one needs to bear in mind when interpreting the results. First, Google’s underlying search algorithms are not transparent. For validation, we therefore presented our sample to an expert on climate scepticism who confirmed that the selected climate change blogs were popular in the UK between 2009 and 2015. Second, the ten selected blogs provided different numbers of relevant blog entries, leading to stronger representation of some blogs than others. However, since the discursive characteristics were largely similar within each of the two competing discourses, we are confident that our main findings are not affected by the weight of individual blogs. Third, four of the climate sceptic blogs were US-based while all climate activist blogs operated from the UK. Consequently, it appeared that selected climate sceptic bloggers often discussed issues going on in other countries, such as the United States. This raises the question whether predominantly UK-based climate sceptic blogs would discuss different issues. Therefore, more research is needed to draw any conclusions about cross-national effects on climate change blog coverage. Finally, the selected blog posts were published one week before or after or during one of the COPs, which might have skewed the findings towards topics related to international climate politics. Therefore, it is important to note that this part of the findings might have been less pronounced during other times.

5.3. Practical implications and future research

The implications for practice are consistent with a growing body of knowledge about effective climate communication strategies (Corner & Clarke, 2017). The findings cast doubt on the possibility to address climate change as a matter of meaningful dialogue and problem-solving unless the underlying ontological and epistemological divides are addressed. Such a reflexive approach becomes more difficult in a polarized public sphere (Feindt & Weiland, 2018). Overcoming the polarization in turn faces significant structural barriers if diverging worldviews are produced and reproduced through discursive structures with potentially little overlap.

Regarding future research, we recommend to inquire whether the findings presented here are also valid for other parts of the climate blogosphere, e.g. blogs in other languages. Further research should also address mobilization and demobilization effects among audiences, in particular the effects of discourse that is dissonant with audience’s previous perceptions, as well as the extent to which similar forms of discursive polarization also affect other areas of environmental politics. We also recommend to apply the discourse analytical framework used here to investigate whether the discourses that we found in the blogosphere are also prominent in traditional media, on other online platforms, and in institutionalized political deliberations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Dutch Research Council: [Grant Number 406.17.527].

Notes on contributors

C. W. van Eck

C.W. van Eck is an Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on climate change communication. In particular, she is interested in the role of online media in climate change polarization.

P. H. Feindt

P. H. Feindt is Professor of Agricultural and Food Policy at the Albrecht Daniel Thaer Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His research addresses a broad range of questions in agricultural and food policy, in particular links to environmental policy, sustainability transitions, and the resilience of farming systems.