Debating Global Warming in Media Discussion Forums: Strategies Enacted by "Persistent Deniers" and Implications for Schooling

Abstract

Newspapers and other media are often used as a source of information on science issues, both by the public and teachers in classrooms. Over six months, we collected discussions of global warming issues from the online forums of a national newspaper. Our analysis of these contributions suggests there is a considerable effort in these forums, especially from certain individual posters, to detract from the arguments in support of global warming by using a variety of strategies. This paper summarizes strategies employed by these frequent posters and discusses how we see many of them emerging from traditional classroom science environments.