Developing an Ad Hominem typology for classifying climate misinformation,Climate Policy

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Developing an Ad Hominem typology for classifying climate misinformation
Climate Policy ( IF 6.056 ) Pub Date : 2023-08-13 , DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2023.2245792
Sergei A. Samoilenko ₁ , John Cook ₂

Affiliation

ABSTRACT

Misinformation produced by various interest groups is a significant contributing factor to public confusion about climate policy. Character assassination against climate scientists and policymakers is the most common type of misinformation strategy used by contrarians in climate debates (Coan, T. G., Boussalis, C., Cook, J., & Nanko, M. O. (2021). Computer-assisted classification of contrarian claims about climate change. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 22320). Despite its widespread use, however, character assassination remains understudied by social scientists, especially in the context of climate change. This study adapts Douglas Walton’s (1998. Ad hominem arguments. University of Alabama Press) typology of ‘ad hominem’ attacks – personal attacks targeting an individual’s character, competence, or motives – to misinformation campaigns against the climate community. We developed an original codebook for classifying ad hominem arguments made by climate contrarians. Drawing on a 553-paragraph sample from a corpus from 55 contrarian blogs and 15 conservative think-tank websites published in English between 2008 and 2020, we then determined the relative prominence of each type of attack using a consensus-coding approach. Bias attacks, which entail accusing climate scientists of political partisanship or having an ideological agenda, were the most common form of contrarian ad hominem attack. The dominance of bias attacks can be explained by their strong relevance for scientific credibility. The study found that ad hominem attacks, often with bias and moral attacks clustered together, are the most common combination. The article concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for climate policy and future research.

Key Policy Insights

Climate misinformation politicizes climate science, further amplifying ideological conflict and fostering ideological polarization;
Climate misinformation campaigns feature a range of different types of ad hominem attacks designed to undermine the credibility of climate scientists;
The most common type of ad hominem attack on climate scientists in our sample was bias attacks, which entail accusing climate scientists of political partisanship or of having an ideological agenda;
Attacks on the moral character of climate scientists were the only type of ad hominem that increased during the period under study (2008–2020);
Different types of ad hominems often appeared together, with the most common combination being bias and moral attacks;
Ad hominem attacks on climate scientists are part of misinformation campaigns designed to stall discussion on climate change and delay the implementation of climate policies.

中文翻译：

开发针对气候错误信息进行分类的人身攻击类型学

摘要

各种利益集团产生的错误信息是公众对气候政策感到困惑的一个重要因素。针对气候科学家和政策制定者的人格诽谤是逆向投资者在气候辩论中最常见的错误信息策略（Coan, TG, Boussalis, C., Cook, J., & Nanko, MO (2021)。逆向投资者的计算机辅助分类关于气候变化的主张。《科学报告》，11 (1), 22320)。然而，尽管人格暗杀被广泛使用，但社会科学家仍未对其进行充分研究，特别是在气候变化的背景下。本研究改编自 Douglas Walton 的研究（1998 年。人身攻击论证。阿拉巴马大学出版社）“人身攻击”的类型（针对个人性格、能力或动机的人身攻击）到针对气候界的错误信息活动。我们开发了一个原始密码本，用于对气候逆向者提出的人身攻击论点进行分类。然后，我们利用 2008 年至 2020 年间以英文发布的 55 个逆向博客和 15 个保守派智库网站的语料库中的 553 段样本，使用共识编码方法确定了每种类型攻击的相对突出程度。偏见攻击，包括指责气候科学家有政治党派偏见或有意识形态议程，是逆向人身攻击的最常见形式攻击。偏见攻击的主导地位可以通过其与科学可信度的强烈相关性来解释。研究发现，人身攻击是最常见的组合，通常将偏见和道德攻击聚集在一起。文章最后讨论了这些发现对气候政策和未来研究的影响。