Contradicting pot ntial climat misinformation during t l vis d d bat s

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Experimental research recommends that climate change debaters actively contradict misinformation. This study examines discursively how participants do so during prominent televised Danish debates, that is, how they orient towards elements in other participants’ preceding talk about climate change causes and implications as factually wrong. Three types are considered: (i) contradictions produced by the interviewer in the next turn; (ii) contradictions produced by a co-participant after being allocated the turn by the interviewer; and (iii) contradictions produced by a co-participant in a self-selected turn. Analysis reveals that the contradictions are attuned to and limited by these sequential circumstances. The study overall finds that sequential context significantly impacts climate change debaters’ possibilities for contradicting misinformation; in particular, potential misinformation may be ‘smuggled’ into multi-unit turns, which can prove difficult for co-panelists to confront because of the format’s turn-taking provision.

Original languageEnglish
JournalPragmatics and Society
ISSN1878-9714
DOIs
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

    Research areas

  • climate change communication, climate journalism, conversation analysis, debate, discourse analysis, institutional interaction, misinformation

ID: 389380406