Orchestrating the climate choir: the boundaries of scientists’ expertise, the relevance of experiential knowledge, and quality assurance in the public climate debate

Peter Busch Nicolaisen ()
Additional contact information
Peter Busch Nicolaisen: The Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy, Aarhus University

Climatic Change, 2024, vol. 177, issue 3, No 2, 28 pages

Abstract: Abstract Scientific knowledge is at the heart of discussions about climate change. However, it has been proposed that the apparent predominance of climate science in the societal debate should be reconsidered and that a more inclusive approach is warranted. Further, the introduction of new communication technology has made the information environment more fragmented, possibly endangering the quality of societal deliberation on climate change concerns. Using focus group methodology, this paper explores how climate scientists, climate journalists, and citizens perceive scientific experts’ mandate when they communicate publicly, the role of experiential knowledge in discussions of climate-related issues, and who the three actors prefer to guard the quality of the climate information exchanged in the public sphere. The findings show that scientific experts are perceived to carry a high degree of legitimacy, but only within their own narrow specialty, while experiential knowledge was seen as more useful in applied domains of science than in arcane research fields. In the new media landscape, journalists are still generally preferred as gatekeepers by all three actor types.

Keywords: Climate choir; Scientists’ expertise; Experiential knowledge; Public climate debate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-024-03697-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:177:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-024-03697-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-024-03697-3

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().