Blogging climate change: A case study

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Date
2018-10-03
Authors
Sajeev, Erangu Purath Mohankumar
Mintz-Woo, Kian
Damert, Matthias
Brunner, Lukas
Eise, Jessica
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Volume Title
Publisher
Springer
Published Version
10.1007/978-3-319-98294-6_9
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Abstract
Public perception of the magnitude of challenges associated with climate change is still lower than that of the majority of scientists. The societal relevance of climate change has raised the need for a more direct communication between scientists and the public. However, peer-reviewed scientific articles are not well-suited to engaging a wider audience. This begets a need to explore other avenues for communicating climate change. Social media is a vibrant source for information exchange among the masses. Blogs in particular are a promising tool for disseminating complex findings on topics such as climate change, as they are easier to comprehend and are targeted at a broader audience compared to scientific publications. This chapter discusses the usefulness of blogs in communicating climate change, using our blog Climate Footnotes (climatefootnotes.com ) as a case study. Drawing from communication theory and our experiences with Climate Footnotes, we identify and describe elements such as message framing, translation of scientific data, role of language, and interactivity in aiding climate change communication. The insights outlined herein help understand the nature and impact of online climate change communication. The chapter may also serve as a useful blueprint for scientists interested in utilizing blogs to communicate climate change.
Description
Keywords
Blogs , Climate change , Climate footnotes , Science communication , Science-to-public
Citation
Sajeev, E. P. M., Mintz-Woo, K., Damert, M., Brunner, L. and Eise, J. (2019) 'Blogging Climate Change: A Case Study', in Leal Filho, W., Lackner, B. & McGhie, H. (eds.) Addressing the Challenges in Communicating Climate Change Across Various Audiences. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 129-142. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-98294-6_9
Link to publisher’s version
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-98294-6_9
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/10468/10598
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Philosophy - Book Chapters
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019. Open Access. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, duplication, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, a link is provided to the Creative Commons license and any changes made are indicated.