AN EXPLORATORY QUALITATIVE STUDY OF ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTICS’ MESSAGES ON YOUTUBE

Science education standards (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards, Earth Science Literacy Initiative) place ever greater emphases on teaching the science behind anthropogenic climate change (ACC). Conveying this knowledge has quickly become a chief task of Earth Science educators, yet teaching ACC presents unique problems. Students are exposed to conflicting streams of ACC information, often from nonscientific sources such as news media, online blogs, politicians, and grassroot organizations. This information is frequently incorrect or purposefully misleading. Belief in ACC can also be rooted to an ideological worldview and the potential for confirmation bias exists; individuals occasionally seek out, and are more willing to accept, information that confirms preconceived notions on ACC. This study characterizes arguments used by skeptics of ACC through one information stream, online media. YouTube provides an ideal setting for documenting these arguments due to its unregulated nature. A total of three hours of video with combined views of >2,000,000 were chosen for analysis. Emergent coding yielded 25 echoed messages which were broken into scientific and non-scientific arguments against ACC. Scientific arguments countering ACC such as “climate change drives CO₂, CO₂ does not drive climate,” “the sun is the sole controller of climate change,” constituted ~30% of the total run time. Non-scientific arguments countering ACC such as “climate change is a hoax proliferated by academics to receive funding,” “ACC is a fraud created by the environmental movement,” covered ~22% of the total runtime. Most curricula emphasize understanding the science behind ACC as a learning goal, however the high proportion of non-scientific arguments in ACC skeptic videos suggests that scientific arguments alone will be insufficient to convince students of ACC. Instead, our results imply that teaching the nature of science (NOS) alongside content knowledge is needed to help counter non-scientific arguments. Students with a better understanding of how scientists do science along with the content knowledge behind ACC will allow educators to eliminate misconceptions, inoculate students from further misinformation, and better fit ACC acceptance into students preexisting worldviews.