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Talk like an expert: the construction of expertise in news comments concerning climate change
Coen, Sharon Meredith, Joanne Woods, Ruth Fernandez, Ana
Coen, Sharon
Meredith, Joanne
Woods, Ruth
Fernandez, Ana
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2020-12-30
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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.
Citation
Coen, S., Meredith, J., Woods, R. and Fernandez, A. (2020) Talk like an expert: the construction of expertise in news comments concerning climate change, Public Understanding of Science, 30 (4), pp. 400-416. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662520981729
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Journal article
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en
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© 2020 The Authors. Published by SAGE. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence.
The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0963662520981729
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0963-6625