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Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change

Effectively addressing climate change requires significant changes in individual and collective human behavior and decision‐making. Yet, in light of the increasing politicization of (climate) science, and the attempts of vested‐interest groups to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change...

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Autores principales: van der Linden, Sander, Leiserowitz, Anthony, Rosenthal, Seth, Maibach, Edward
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6607159/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31565263
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/gch2.201600008
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author van der Linden, Sander
Leiserowitz, Anthony
Rosenthal, Seth
Maibach, Edward
author_facet van der Linden, Sander
Leiserowitz, Anthony
Rosenthal, Seth
Maibach, Edward
author_sort van der Linden, Sander
collection PubMed
description Effectively addressing climate change requires significant changes in individual and collective human behavior and decision‐making. Yet, in light of the increasing politicization of (climate) science, and the attempts of vested‐interest groups to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change through organized “disinformation campaigns,” identifying ways to effectively engage with the public about the issue across the political spectrum has proven difficult. A growing body of research suggests that one promising way to counteract the politicization of science is to convey the high level of normative agreement (“consensus”) among experts about the reality of human‐caused climate change. Yet, much prior research examining public opinion dynamics in the context of climate change has done so under conditions with limited external validity. Moreover, no research to date has examined how to protect the public from the spread of influential misinformation about climate change. The current research bridges this divide by exploring how people evaluate and process consensus cues in a polarized information environment. Furthermore, evidence is provided that it is possible to pre‐emptively protect (“inoculate”) public attitudes about climate change against real‐world misinformation.
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spelling pubmed-66071592019-09-27 Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change van der Linden, Sander Leiserowitz, Anthony Rosenthal, Seth Maibach, Edward Glob Chall Full Papers Effectively addressing climate change requires significant changes in individual and collective human behavior and decision‐making. Yet, in light of the increasing politicization of (climate) science, and the attempts of vested‐interest groups to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change through organized “disinformation campaigns,” identifying ways to effectively engage with the public about the issue across the political spectrum has proven difficult. A growing body of research suggests that one promising way to counteract the politicization of science is to convey the high level of normative agreement (“consensus”) among experts about the reality of human‐caused climate change. Yet, much prior research examining public opinion dynamics in the context of climate change has done so under conditions with limited external validity. Moreover, no research to date has examined how to protect the public from the spread of influential misinformation about climate change. The current research bridges this divide by exploring how people evaluate and process consensus cues in a polarized information environment. Furthermore, evidence is provided that it is possible to pre‐emptively protect (“inoculate”) public attitudes about climate change against real‐world misinformation. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017-01-23 /pmc/articles/PMC6607159/ /pubmed/31565263 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/gch2.201600008 Text en © 2017 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Full Papers
van der Linden, Sander
Leiserowitz, Anthony
Rosenthal, Seth
Maibach, Edward
Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change
title Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change
title_full Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change
title_fullStr Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change
title_full_unstemmed Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change
title_short Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change
title_sort inoculating the public against misinformation about climate change
topic Full Papers
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6607159/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31565263
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/gch2.201600008
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