Social Construction Of Knowledge Theory And Climate Change

Social Construction of Knowledge Theory and Climate Change

While more and more empirical evidence amasses on the role of humans as the cause of climate change, politicians and the media have readily taken advantage of the long process of science by skewing public perception before scientific consensus and subsequent public outreach is accomplished. This is because it is relatively easy to sensationalize climate issues or confuse the public in the United States due to freedom of speech and other outlets that lack barriers for controlling misinformation. The social construct of knowledge theory explains how politicians use scientific consensus to back policy design. This occurs irrespective of injustices that may be caused to ordinary citizens,

The movie ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ created an image of climate change as occurring so rapidly and with such great a magnitude that we will be unprepared no matter what measures are taken. Whether intentional or not, the movie put forth the idea of complete helplessness while at the same time presenting the idea that extreme and universal global cooling will occur. This misinformation served as a contrast to the term “global warming” which was just becoming popularized, and thus likely confused the public. Many other natural disaster movies have taken this stance of complete helplessness such as 2012 and Knowing. Other documentary style movies have negatively affected public perception. In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore presented graphs and scientific analysis of trends and “where they are going” that also created an image of helplessness, unless humans and particularly Americans act immediately. While Gore’s intentions may have been good, is arguments were actually counter-productive. Psychoanalysis studies have shown that most people are not moved by fear-based tactics and in fact will distance themselves from any literature dealing with subject matter that is scary or uncomfortable to think about. The power of knowledge constructing has detrimental effects if not used well, and both Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and The Day After Tomorrow prove this

Increases in fires, hurricanes, and tsunamis are partially responsible for current public perceptions of the world’s climate. While these events have slightly increased over the last twenty years (probably a natural fluctuation), the media coverage of such events has sky-rocketed. When bad weather is seen again and again on TV, we can’t help but feel as though there is an unavoidable nature to these problems. If climate is so naturally variable, then why is climate change even an issue? At the same time, conservative news in particular uses “expert analysis” which causes misinformation. According to a study of fox news viewership’s influence on global warming opinions, the more times per month an individual watched Fox news the less likely they are to believe global warming was caused by things that people do (Krosnick and MacInnis). Another study has shown that where liberal framing is generally ambivalent towards the usage of the terms “climate change” vs “global warming”, conservatives are more likely to refer to it as global warming than climate change (the Economist). This makes sense given that the term global warming implies that temperatures are rising, and thus places like the East coast and parts of the Midwest that have seen temperature decreases can be used as examples of the globe not