This was particularly true when climate change was salient and Americans were significantly polarizing on the issue.įor example, Al Gore was featured in 48 per cent of climate change stories on Fox News in 2006 and in 57 per cent in 2007. So, what about the role of Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth in this process? Al Gore was featured prominently in the news media coverage of climate change. In this January 2007 file photo, former Vice President Al Gore acknowledges spectators in Japan in front of a poster of his documentary film (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara) An Inconvenient Truth In an age of affective polarization where Republicans and Democrats each increasingly dislike the other, it makes sense that Republicans may have taken an oppositional stance on climate change, at least partly, in response to signals from Democratic elites. When one side’s messages are clear and the other side’s are muddled, as was the case here, it’s plausible that Republican voters took their cues from Democrats. Contrary to conventional wisdom, only a small fraction of Republican messages on climate change explicitly denied the scientific consensus on climate change. Meanwhile, Republican messages have been fewer in number, and, until the Obama presidency, ambiguous in direction. Second, Democratic messages have been more common in news coverage, and, unsurprisingly, consistent in a pro-climate direction. As a result, the public has been exposed to a growing number of messages about climate change from party elites. First, politicians became increasingly common in coverage, politicizing the issue as it grew in importance. What we found is a nuanced story that sheds considerable light on why the public polarized on climate change. In our research, we examined the political signals that were present in the coverage of climate change in major, high circulation daily newspapers, like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today, as well network television channels ABC, CBS and NBC, and cable news channel Fox News. These signals are, more often than not, carried to them by the mass media. When uncertain about novel political issues, like climate change, they look for signals from political elites for guidance. These form critical components of their social identities. Voters, particularly in America, tend to harbour strong positive and negative attachments to political parties. This is of particular importance for our work. The commonly observed pattern is that public opinion tends to follow, rather than lead, debate among political elites. We have studied in detail how the media covered the issue of climate change since the 1980s and how it may have played a role in polarizing the American public.

An inconvenient truth (book)