The potential of blogs to create a dialogue on controversial science

Much has been made of the potential of social media, including blogs, for laypeople to have more of a voice in contested science issues and the media agenda (e.g., Brossard, 2013; Jaspal et al., 2012; Jenkins, 2006; Marres, 2007). For scientists and science communicators blogs appear to offer a medium, which may provide a more expansive space for the democratic deliberation of science with various publics (Brossard, 2013). A review of the literature identifies seven benefits of blogs for communicating with and engaging people in science, especially controversial science. They can (ideally):

(1) offer the previous consumers of media the opportunity to become the producers of content (Rosen, 2006);

(2) transform news from being a one-way dissemination of information and opinion to a dialogue where different views are heard and (ideally) valued (Cahill & Ward, 2007; Jenkins, 2006; Meraz, 2011; Schäfer, 2012; Wilcox, 2012); (3) amplify the voice of publics by allowing them to participate in scientific debates

alongside traditional media, government and science (Cahill & Ward, 2007; Carvalho, 2010; Trench 2012);

(4) bypass the framings of scientific reporting by the mainstream media, allowing publics to access a broader range of perspectives on scientific controversies (Colson, 2011; Schmidt, 2008);

(5) offer the opportunity for publics interested in science to explore the complexities of science and to use sources of information and news outside of traditional mass media (Lemonick, 2010; Readfearn, 2010; Schmidt, 2008; Ritson, 2016; Trench, 2012);

(6) enable scientists, journalists and science communicators to explain the scientific contexts behind the news (Bell, 2012; Colson, 2011; Swain, 2012); and

(7) transform and complement the peer review process, especially after publication, though informal feedback (Brossard, 2013; Riesch & Mendel, 2013; Ritson, 2016; Trench, 2012; Yeo et al., 2016).

The first four of these seven potential benefits of blogs point to motivations directed at the greater democratisation of science for any publics that can be engaged. The last three point to those publics who are already interested and engaged in science being able to explain, explore and give feedback about the complexities of science in more depth.

The ability of blogs to generate conversations, facilitate interactions and bring together diverse sources of information (Shanahan, 2011) indicates opportunities for a dialogue between scientists, science communicators and laypeople. Blogs provide a means for people to connect rapidly, casually and interactively about scientific

information and controversies (Schmidt, 2008; Trench, 2012; Wilcox, 2012). As such, blogs have the potential to move from deficit-style communication to the theorised dialogue model of science communication (Wynne, 2006; Trench, 2008; Zorn et al., 2012), where there is a two-way interaction between scientists and laypeople.

Certainly, the climate science debate, along with controversy about mitigation and adaptation policies and actions, makes for a rich ‘blogosphere’ (defined as all the blogs on a specific topic, and their interconnections) where climate science proponents and deniers are seen regularly online participating in social media (Schäfer, 2012). This was particularly evidenced during and after the 2009 “Climategate” where the battle between IPCC scientists and deniers was carried out almost entirely in blogs (Trench, 2012). It is virtually impossible to count the total number of blogs addressing climate change. Elgesem et al. (2015) studied the texts of 1.3 million blog posts from 3,000 English-speaking climate blogs, which they identified from crawling Wordpress and Blogspot blogs.

The study in this chapter builds on existing research about those who post science blogs (known as bloggers) and the content of their blogs (e.g. Riesch & Mendel, 2013 who researched the distinctive norms of the UK ‘badscience’ blog communities). Scholars have identified a variety of motivations for people to engage in science blogging. Trench (2012) found various motivations for science bloggers, including to enable conversations with the public, to find collaborators, to increase understanding of the science and to gain feedback. Schäfer (2012) found that science bloggers’

motivations ranged from giving them “an opportunity to discuss their finding with laypeople” to engaging people in “discussions of scientific issues that do not typically take place in the scientific literature” to enabling “the public to be included more

extensively in science” (p. 350). However, despite the growing body of research into the activities of science bloggers and blogs, there has been very little research looking at how commenters (those who respond to blogposts and those who respond to the comments of others) engage with blogs, and whether the nature of their engagement reflects more deliberative discussions of science or reinforces top down communication approaches (Kouper, 2010; Schäfer, 2012; Brossard, 2013; Pearce et al., 2015). While there has been some research into the online comments of readers of science news in online newspapers (e.g. Collins & Nerlich, 2014; Koteyko et al., 2013), there is minimal research into the motivations of publics who comment on science blogs that are

independent of mainstream news channels. Jarreau & Porter (2018) surveyed almost 3,000 readers of 40 science blogs, and presumably these readers also comment from time to time, but the survey focussed on motivations for these bloggers to read the blogs, not to comment on them. Interestingly, they found that, “The readers of science blogs as a whole are an elite, highly educated group of mostly scientists and future scientists who actively seek out science media content” (p. 159). But this thesis seeks to analyse the actual comments and dialogue on blogs to find out who engages in controversial science blogs by commenting. What are their apparent motivations for commenting? How do the blog commenters participate in a dialogue with each other and the people who posted the blogs?

This chapter attempts to explore these questions by analysing the comments on two prominent climate change blogs both produced by Australian science

climate change, www.skepticalscience.com, and the other denies this science,

www.joannenova.com.au. My investigation of two climate change blogs amongst thousands does not intend to be generalizable or representative of all climate change blogs. Rather, the study provides an in-depth examination of the nature of engagement occurring amongst publics in two highly polarised blogs, and the findings are contingent on that context. Regardless of the limitations of the research, my findings do say

something important about how laypeople engage with climate change science through blogs. As I go on to elaborate, when taken with the findings from research into political blogs, observations from the following analysis do suggest both the opportunities and limitations that blogs may have as a tool in creating a dialogue about controversial science.

Some researchers see the ability of science blogs to engage publics directly as being an expression of the move over the past three decades towards more participatory science communication (Colson, 2011; Pearce et al., 2015). Kouper (2010) also

highlights the potential of science blogs as spaces for public discourse but concludes that they can also be “used to reinforce the traditional top-down model of science communication” (p. 1). Similar findings about the limitations of social media, including blogs, and their tendency to reinvent established communication methods and styles have been found by other scholars, including Kahan et al. (2012), Pearce et al. (2015), Ritson (2016) and Trench (2012).

This chapter examines the comments to blogs on climate change science to see if there is a more deliberative engagement of laypeople in climate science through discussion on these blogs. Are people having a genuine dialogue about climate science? Are they deliberating about the science and its policy implications? My analysis of conversations between commenters engaging with polarised climate blogs seeks to

better understand how the predicted characteristics of science communication models, especially the dialogue model, translate into practice, and what this says about both the practice and the theorised models.