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New paper published: Echo Chambers of Denial: Explaining User Comments on Climate Change

The paper “Echo Chambers of Denial: Explaining User Comments on Climate Change” was published in Environmental Communication. The study identifies factors that foster comments that are sceptical or supportive of basic assumptions of anthropogenic climate change, drawing on online news in the US, the UK, Germany, India, and Switzerland. The results show that users adapt to the dominant opinion within the respective media outlet: user comment sections serve as echo chambers rather than as corrective mechanisms. Climate change denial is more visible in user comment sections in countries where the climate change debate reflects the scientific consensus on climate change and user comments create niches of denial.

The full paper is available online.

The paper was published by Stefanie Walter, PhD, Prof. Dr. Michael Brüggemann and Prof. Dr. Sven Engesser.

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