Science by social media: Attitudes towards climate change are mediated by perceived social consensus

Internet blogs have become an important platform for the discussion of many scientific issues, including climate change. Blogs, and in particular the comment sections of blogs, also play a major role in the dissemination of contrarian positions that question mainstream climate science. The effect of...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Cook, J. (Author), Fay, N. (Author), Gignac, G.E (Author), Lewandowsky, S. (Author)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer New York LLC 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:View Fulltext in Publisher
LEADER 02489nam a2200481Ia 4500
001 10.3758-s13421-019-00948-y
008 220511s2019 CNT 000 0 und d
020 |a 0090502X (ISSN) 
245 1 0 |a Science by social media: Attitudes towards climate change are mediated by perceived social consensus 
260 0 |b Springer New York LLC  |c 2019 
856 |z View Fulltext in Publisher  |u https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-019-00948-y 
520 3 |a Internet blogs have become an important platform for the discussion of many scientific issues, including climate change. Blogs, and in particular the comment sections of blogs, also play a major role in the dissemination of contrarian positions that question mainstream climate science. The effect of this content on people’s attitudes is not fully understood. In particular, it is unknown how the interaction between the content of blog posts and blog comments affects readers’ attitudes. We report an experiment that orthogonally varied those two variables using blog posts and comments that either did, or did not, support the scientific consensus on climate change. We find that beliefs are partially shaped by readers’ perception of how widely an opinion expressed in a blog post appears to be shared by other readers. The perceived social consensus among readers, in turn, is determined by whether blog comments endorse or reject the contents of a post. When comments reject the content, perceived reader consensus is lower than when comments endorse the content. The results underscore the importance of perceived social consensus on opinion formation. © 2019, The Author(s). 
650 0 4 |a adult 
650 0 4 |a Adult 
650 0 4 |a article 
650 0 4 |a attitude 
650 0 4 |a Attitude 
650 0 4 |a blogging 
650 0 4 |a Blogging 
650 0 4 |a climate change 
650 0 4 |a Climate Change 
650 0 4 |a consensus 
650 0 4 |a Consensus 
650 0 4 |a female 
650 0 4 |a Female 
650 0 4 |a human 
650 0 4 |a human experiment 
650 0 4 |a Humans 
650 0 4 |a male 
650 0 4 |a Male 
650 0 4 |a Online disinformation 
650 0 4 |a Perceived consensus 
650 0 4 |a perception 
650 0 4 |a perception 
650 0 4 |a Science communication 
650 0 4 |a social media 
650 0 4 |a Social media 
650 0 4 |a Social Perception 
700 1 |a Cook, J.  |e author 
700 1 |a Fay, N.  |e author 
700 1 |a Gignac, G.E.  |e author 
700 1 |a Lewandowsky, S.  |e author 
773 |t Memory and Cognition