Recurrent Fury: Conspiratorial Discourse in the Blogosphere Triggered by Research on the Role of Conspiracist Ideation in Climate Denial

Authors

  • Stephan Lewandowsky
    University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom; University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
  • John Cook
    University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia; University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
  • Klaus Oberauer
    University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
  • Scott Brophy
    Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, USA
  • Elisabeth A. Lloyd
    Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
  • Michael Marriott
    Climate Realities Research, Melbourne, Australia

Abstract

A growing body of evidence has implicated conspiracist ideation in the rejection of scientific propositions. Internet blogs in particular have become the staging ground for conspiracy theories that challenge the link between HIV and AIDS, the benefits of vaccinations, or the reality of climate change. A recent study involving visitors to climate blogs found that conspiracist ideation was associated with the rejection of climate science and other scientific propositions such as the link between lung cancer and smoking, and between HIV and AIDS. That article stimulated considerable discursive activity in the climate blogosphere—i.e., the numerous blogs dedicated to climate “skepticism”—that was critical of the study. The blogosphere discourse was ideally suited for analysis because its focus was clearly circumscribed, it had a well-defined onset, and it largely discontinued after several months. We identify and classify the hypotheses that questioned the validity of the paper’s conclusions using well-established criteria for conspiracist ideation. In two behavioral studies involving naive participants we show that those criteria and classifications were reconstructed in a blind test. Our findings extend a growing body of literature that has examined the important, but not always constructive, role of the blogosphere in public and scientific discourse.