ABSTRACT

Climate change and populism are two major phenomena in contemporary politics. Recent successes of populist parties and politicians, especially in Europe and in the US, have given rise to extensive debates in the academic literature and beyond. Yet the link between populism and climate change scepticism (henceforth ‘scepticism’), has so far received little attention. This paper examines the link between scepticism and populism by means of a unique dataset: a survey and detailed web browsing histories of participants from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the US, and the UK. The web tracking data includes more than 150 million website visits over a period of three months and the survey contains questions about political attitudes and attitudes towards climate change. We analyse the 8893 websites which contained ‘climate change’ and its cognates in the URLs and link these website visits and the content of these websites to the political attitudes and climate change orientation of those who visited them. The contribution is both methodological (linking surveys and web tracking data, including cross-country comparison) and substantive (uncovering links between populists, their climate change orientations, and the content of related websites they visited). Our analysis demonstrates the value of computational methods in political communication research and provides insights into the link between populists and climate change scepticism.

摘要

气候变化和民粹主义是当代政治中的两大现象。民粹主义政党和政治家最近取得的成功，特别是在欧洲和美国，引起了学术文献及其他领域的广泛争论。然而，民粹主义与气候变化怀疑论（以下简称“怀疑论”）之间的联系迄今为止很少受到关注。本文通过一个独特的数据集检验怀疑主义和民粹主义之间的联系：来自法国、德国、意大利、西班牙、美国和英国的参与者的调查和详细的网络浏览历史。网络跟踪数据包括三个月内超过 1.5 亿次网站访问，调查包含有关政治态度和对气候变化态度的问题。我们分析了 8893 个在 URL 中包含“气候变化”及其同源词的网站，并将这些网站访问和这些网站的内容与访问者的政治态度和气候变化方向联系起来。贡献既有方法论（将调查和网络跟踪数据联系起来，包括跨国比较），也有实质性贡献（揭示民粹主义者之间的联系、他们的气候变化方向以及他们访问的相关网站的内容）。我们的分析证明了计算方法在政治传播研究中的价值，并为民粹主义者与气候变化怀疑论之间的联系提供了见解。贡献既有方法论（将调查和网络跟踪数据联系起来，包括跨国比较），也有实质性贡献（揭示民粹主义者之间的联系、他们的气候变化方向以及他们访问的相关网站的内容）。我们的分析证明了计算方法在政治传播研究中的价值，并为民粹主义者与气候变化怀疑论之间的联系提供了见解。贡献既有方法论（将调查和网络跟踪数据联系起来，包括跨国比较），也有实质性贡献（揭示民粹主义者之间的联系、他们的气候变化方向以及他们访问的相关网站的内容）。我们的分析证明了计算方法在政治传播研究中的价值，并为民粹主义者与气候变化怀疑论之间的联系提供了见解。