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Cited by 52Climate Change Communication and PerceptionLanguage, Discourse, Communication StrategiesRhetoric and Communication Studies

Online climate change polarization: Interactional framing analysis of climate change blog comments

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van Eck, Christel W., Mulder, Bob C., Dewulf, Art·2020·Science Communication
DOI 10.1177/1075547020942228
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Abstract

While increasingly more is known about how to reframe the relevance of climate change, much less is known about how people deal with situations in which they are confronted with frames that are incompatible with their own frames. The current research conducts an interactional framing analysis to investigate how users in climate change blog comments interactively construct the meaning of issues, identities and relationships, and their interactions. Results show that most framing differences start with issue framing but thereafter shift to identity and relationship or process framing. Finally, users mostly deploy polarizing interaction strategies to deal with these framing differences.

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  • Interactions with out-groups in polarized networks are primarily of a dismissive and hostile nature.

    “Interactions with out-groups in polarized networks are primarily of a dismissive and hostile nature.”

    From When debates break apart: discursive polarization as a multi-dimensional divergence emerging in and through communication (2023) · cites this paper as van Eck et al., 2020

    The Discussion and Conclusion (p. 20) reports that climate-change blog commenters often dismissed conflicting frames and that shifts to identity framing predominantly cast the other person negatively. The Interaction Strategies section (p. 16) also describes accusations made during frame polarization. But the study concerns climate-change blog comments, not polarized networks generally, and does not establish that out-group interactions overall are primarily dismissive and hostile. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Interaction sequences with well-reasoned argumentation and deliberation often engendered uncivil conversations.

    “van Eck et al. (2020) explored blogs, finding that "interaction sequences with well-reasoned argumentation and deliberation (issue framing) often engendered uncivil conversations (negative identity and relationship framing)" (p.474).”

    From When debates break apart: discursive polarization as a multi-dimensional divergence emerging in and through communication (2023) · cites this paper as van Eck et al., 2020

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Authors
van Eck, C. W., Mulder, B. C., & Dewulf, A.
Affiliations
  • Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, Netherlands
  • Wageningen University & Research (NL)
ORCID
Venue
Science Communication
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2020-07-28
Volume
42
Issue
4
Pages
454-480
ISSN
  • 0164-0259 (ISSN-L)
  • 1075-5470
  • 1552-8545
DOI
10.1177/1075547020942228
OpenAlex
W3046103734
Cited by
52
References
4
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 3
FWCI
9.34
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Science Communication (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
Funders
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (406.17.527)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change Communication and Perception
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Rhetoric and Communication Studies
Keywords
climate change, online polarization, blog comments, framing, issue framing, identity framing

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