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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Uncertainty discourses in the context of climate change
T2 - A corpus-assisted analysis of UK national newspaper articles
AU - Collins, Luke C.
AU - Nerlich, Brigitte
PY - 2016/9/1
Y1 - 2016/9/1
N2 - Uncertainty is intrinsic to science, to knowledge acquisition and risk assessment. When communicating about climate change, however, uncertainty can be used and understood as 'not knowing', that is, as ignorance. In this article we aim to understand how 'uncertainty' is used in a specific cultural and media context at two important periods in time. Using a corpus linguistic approach, we examine how 'uncertainty' was used in the context of UK press coverage of climate change in 2010 (following 'Climategate') and in 2014-15, after the latest IPCC report had been published. We find that after Climategate and the (failed) Copenhagen summit, 'uncertainty' was used to question the authority and credibility of climate science; after the latest IPCC report and in the run-up to the (more successful) Paris summit, discussions focused on uncertainties inherent in various climate change mitigation activities and associated with the economy, environment and politics more generally.
AB - Uncertainty is intrinsic to science, to knowledge acquisition and risk assessment. When communicating about climate change, however, uncertainty can be used and understood as 'not knowing', that is, as ignorance. In this article we aim to understand how 'uncertainty' is used in a specific cultural and media context at two important periods in time. Using a corpus linguistic approach, we examine how 'uncertainty' was used in the context of UK press coverage of climate change in 2010 (following 'Climategate') and in 2014-15, after the latest IPCC report had been published. We find that after Climategate and the (failed) Copenhagen summit, 'uncertainty' was used to question the authority and credibility of climate science; after the latest IPCC report and in the run-up to the (more successful) Paris summit, discussions focused on uncertainties inherent in various climate change mitigation activities and associated with the economy, environment and politics more generally.
KW - climate change
KW - climate science
KW - corpus linguistics
KW - UK press
KW - Uncertainty
U2 - 10.1515/commun-2016-0009
DO - 10.1515/commun-2016-0009
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:84987739781
VL - 41
SP - 291
EP - 313
JO - Communications
JF - Communications
SN - 0341-2059
IS - 3
ER -