| dc.description.abstract | This thesis is concerned with the meaning of using blogs to convey
knowledge about a consequential but contentious issue and the
qualities that render blogs a useful tool for the communication of
science. More precisely, the study concentrates on a group of twelve
mainstream scientist-produced climate blogs (weblogs), exploring
their character and role in the communication of climate science and
climate change. During a period when terms such as “fake news” and
“post-truth” are prevalent in public discourses, many of which
revolve around how such notions may be associated with a declining
public trust in science, the importance of direct communication
between scientists and a broader audience is stressed, especially
with reference to scientific areas such as climate science and climate
change, that is, areas that people are interested in or concerned
about. At the same time, the communicative capacity of the internet
has been emphasized, while there seems to be an increasing
scholarly interest in the opportunities that blogs provide to users in
different sociocultural settings of communication, including the
communication of science. The main argument of my thesis is that
what could be described as mainstream climate blogging (climate
blogging undertaken by mainstream scientists) has largely come in
because of the communicational inefficiency existing in the media
environment where climate-related information has been ordinarily
communicated. Following a qualitative multiple-case study research
method, which involves in-depth interviewing of the bloggers and
readers of the blogs, as well as the examination of the blogs’ content
and essential technological characteristics, this thesis looks at the
history of climate blogging and, primarily, at the bloggers’ and
readers’ perceptions and experiences of using the blogs. The
analysis shows that the main purpose that the mainstream scientist-produced
climate blogs appear to have in common consists in filling
the information gap existing in the communication of climate
change and addressing the mis/disinformation disseminated
through the mainstream media and the internet. The scientist-bloggers
do so not merely by providing some additional
information, but rather, by contributing their science-based
knowledge and perspectives. The blogs can be characterized by
their expert-oriented, authoritative, and trustworthy nature, while
the knowledge communicated through them has an intermediate
character, between the media’s arguably superficial, even biased,
covering of climate-related topics, on the one hand, and the
specialized technical analysis of climate science provided by the
peer-reviewed articles, on the other. What was generally described
by the interviewed readers as the blogs’ proximity to science
appears to be a distinguishing characteristic of mainstream climate
blogging. Additionally, the way that the affordances of the blogs (the
possibilities for action and interaction offered by the blog
technology) are appropriated by the users of the climate blogs
contributes to their scientific quality, rendering the specific type of
climate blogging a legitimate process of climate science
communication. This thesis constitutes the first, to my knowledge,
holistic and in-depth analysis of climate blogging undertaken by
mainstream scientists, describing the mainstream scientist-produced
climate blogs as a distinct, expert-oriented and
authoritative, niche of climate science communication which appeals
to the interested public; a niche characterized by the way that the
blogs are situated within a broader environment of climate
communication. | en |
