Coalitions and counter-coalitions in online contestation: An analysis of the German and British climate change debate

Adam, Silke; Häussler, Thomas; Schmid-Petri, Hannah; Reber, Ueli (2019). Coalitions and counter-coalitions in online contestation: An analysis of the German and British climate change debate. New media & society, 21(11-12), pp. 2671-2690. Sage 10.1177/1461444819855966

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We seek to understand the role of the Internet in policy monopolies characterized by a dominant coalition in traditional political venues. In these settings, we identify coalitions and counter-coalitions on the Web and ask how these coalitions differ resource-wise and where these differences come from. To do so, we combine link tracing and quantitative content analysis in the field of climate change in Germany and the United Kingdom. Our results show that online contestation is indeed structured by competing coalitions of climate advocates and skeptics. Moreover, the counter-coalitions of climate skeptics turn out to be the true winners of online communication: they have not only incorporated conservative media as their allies, but also managed to make themselves more visible than climate advocates. This visibility stems from their own link setting activity, which makes climate advocates’ passive online strategy of just ignoring the skeptical camp ineffective.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Institute of Communication and Media Studies (ICMB)

UniBE Contributor:

Adam, Silke, Häussler, Thomas Wolfgang Martin, Reber, Ueli

Subjects:

300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology

ISSN:

1461-7315

Publisher:

Sage

Funders:

[UNSPECIFIED] German Research Foundation (DFG) ; [UNSPECIFIED] Swiss National Science Foundation

Language:

English

Submitter:

Ueli Reber

Date Deposited:

16 Sep 2019 14:10

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:30

Publisher DOI:

10.1177/1461444819855966

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Climate change, climate skepticism, coalitions, counter-mobilization, hyperlink networks, online contestation, policy monopolies, resources

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.133189

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/133189

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