Talk like an expert: the construction of expertise in news comments concerning climate change

Abstract

This paper explores how readers of UK newspapers construct expertise around climate change (CC). It draws on 300 on-line readers’ comments on news items in The Guardian, Daily Mail and The Telegraph, concerning the release of the IPCC report calling for immediate action on CC. Comments were analysed using discursive psychology. We identified a series of discursive strategies that commenters adopted to present themselves as experts in their commentary. The (mostly indirect) use of category entitlements (implicitly claiming themselves as expert) and the presentation of one’s argument as factual (based on direct or indirect technical knowledge or common sense) emerged as common ways in which readers made claims to expertise, both among the supporters and among the sceptics of CC science. Our findings indicate that expertise is a fluid concept, constructed in diverse ways, with important implications for public engagement with CC science.