TY - JOUR
T1 - Science by social media
T2 - attitudes towards climate change are mediated by perceived social consensus
AU - Lewandowsky, Stephan
AU - Cook, John
AU - Fay, Nicolas
AU - Gignac, Gilles E.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s).
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Online disinformation
KW - Perceived consensus
KW - Science communication
KW - Social media
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85068115442&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3758/s13421-019-00948-y
DO - 10.3758/s13421-019-00948-y
M3 - Article
C2 - 31228014
AN - SCOPUS:85068115442
SN - 0090-502X
VL - 47
SP - 1445
EP - 1456
JO - Memory and Cognition
JF - Memory and Cognition
IS - 8
ER -