Where Does Political Polarization Come From? Locating Polarization Within the U.S. Climate Change Debate

Abstract

How do we understand political polarization within the U.S. climate change debate? This paper unpacks the different components of the debate to determine the source of the political divide that is so noted in the mainstream media and academic literatures. Through analysis of the content of Congressional Hearings on the issue of climate change, we are able to explain political polarization of the issue more fully. In particular, our results show that, contrary to representations in the mainstream media, there is increasing consensus over the science of the issue. Discussions of the type of policy instrument and the economic implications of regulating carbon dioxide emissions, however, continue to polarize opinion. This paper concludes by exploring how these findings help us understand more recent political events around climate change.

An empirical examination of echo chambers in US climate policy networks

“…As scientists continue to warn decisionmakers about the need to act (1)(2)(3)(4)(5), the political debate remains polarized. What's more, this political polarization often manifests among political elites as debates over the veracity and legitimacy of established scientific consensus (6). In January 2015, while debating the Keystone XL oil pipeline in the United States Senate, for example, an amendment was offered to get the "sense of the Senate" about whether humans contribute significantly to climate change (7).…”

“…Numerous studies have aimed to understand why the science of climate change continues to be challenged within policy circles, focusing on the media coverage of the issue (8)(9)(10), the role that conservative think tanks have played in creating a counter-movement (11)(12)(13)(14), and the ways the issue has been discussed by the US Congress (6,(15)(16). Within this literature, scholars have invoked the notion of echo chambers to describe how information has become a partisan choice, and how those choices bias toward sources that reinforce beliefs rather than challenge them, regardless of the source's legitimacy (17).…”

A changing climate of skepticism: The factors shaping climate change coverage in the US press

“…To identify the relevant articles we used the Factiva search engine with the key words "climate change" or "global warming" 1 (for a similar approach see, Fisher, Waggle, Leifeld, 2013;Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004;Painter & Gavin, 2015). The key words had to appear anywhere in the full text.…”

The social networks and paradoxes of the opt-out movement amid the Common Core State Standards implementation: The case of New York

“…The two-mode social networks have been constructed and analyzed in many policy studies. For instance, in the political networks of climate change, the two-mode networks include not only the actors who were the witnesses at congressional hearings on climate change, but also the statements made by the actors (Fisher, Leifeld, & Iwaki, 2013;Fisher, Waggle, & Leifeld, 2013;Leifeld, 2016). In this study, adding the focal issues related to the opt-out movement (i.e., the opt-out movement, the Common Core State Standards, and the New York State Assessment) to the network provides a richer backdrop of the social context of the movement.…”