‘People do have the right to be climate change deniers, you know’: Scepticism, contrarianism and the challenge to freedom of speech in the Australian climate change debate

Myra Gurney University of Western Sydney Email: [email protected]

Abstract

In Australia since 2007, attempts to deal with anthropogenic climate change have become highly politicised, politically poisonous and discursively fractious. Central to the toxic politics has been a vocal media campaign from so-called ‘sceptics’, ‘denialists’ and ‘contrarians’ who have largely framed their opposition to carbon reduction policies around the scientific basis of climate change in general, and the political and economic implications, in particular. The paper uses the text analytics program Leximancer to examine a sample of the columns, blog posts and related reader comments from the prolific Australian conservative commentator and climate sceptic Andrew Bolt, to explore the manner in which sceptics, denialists and contrarians discursively construct their views in the Australian political and media context. It then discusses the extent to which the alternative narrative constructed by Bolt and his readers is consistent with the broader strategies of climate change denialism and its role in legitimizing doubts about the both the veracity of climate science and scientific consensus. It also considers their argument that alternative views equally valid and to exclude them subjugates their freedom of speech. The paper concludes that the views of Bolt and his reads are not examples of genuine scientific scepticism, but rather contrarianism or denialism that is largely ideologically driven.

1 Introduction

The election of the Liberal/National Party government of Tony Abbott in September 2013 has significantly shifted the Australian policy momentum on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Since being elevated to the position of party leader in the wake of an impending ideological implosion over then-leader Malcolm Turnbull’s support for the Rudd government’s proposed emissions trading scheme, Tony Abbott has strategically shifted the focus of the climate change debate and reconfigured the policy initiatives. During the period of the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd governments (2007-2013), the discourse of the debate shifted from climate change as ‘the greatest moral challenge of our generation’ (Rudd, 2007) to framing the so- called ‘carbon tax’ as a ‘wreaking ball across the economy’ (Australian Conservative, 2012), a shift that has contributed significantly to political fortunes on both sides of the ideological divide (for a comprehensive summary see Talberg, Hui, & Loynes, 2013). While Tony Abbott states publically that he believes in the existence of anthropogenic climate change, his previous musings, (including the statement that ‘climate change is absolute crap’), have been contradictory (OzPolitic, 2013).

His government’s actions are a reflection of this ambivalence, or at least of the degree of influence of his party’s more conservative forces (Seccombe, 2014). Since its election, and true to its promise to axe ‘the toxic tax’, the Abbott government has made a concerted effort to undo the climate change policy initiatives efforts of the previous Labor governments. The Clean Energy Bill (‘carbon tax’) was repealed in July 2014 and the Climate Commission, (an independent body set up to provide the public with information about climate change) was abolished. The renewable energy target (RET) is currently being renegotiated and both a recent Energy White Paper and Intergenerational Report have effectively ignored or played down climate change as a factor in long-term policy. There have been significant cuts to science research funding in the CSIRO and the reliability of temperature data from the Bureau of Meteorology has been questioned (Brown, 2014). Two well-known climate sceptics, businessmen Dick Warburton and Maurice Newman, were appointed to lead reviews of climate policy – Newman (2015) recently stating that the UN is using climate change in order to assert ‘a new world order’. Most recently, the government controversially approved funding to establish ‘sceptical environmentalist’ Bjorn Lomborg’s global development think-tank at the University of Western Australia. Internationally, Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty notes that Australia is now seen as ‘public enemy number one’ of the United Nations climate change negotiations due to take place in Paris in December (Davey, 2015).

While opposition to serious climate change policy has been significant in the electoral fortunes of Tony Abbott and the misfortunes of his opponents (one commentator describing it as ‘the black death of Australian politics’ (Hanson, 2010)), a recent survey indicates that Australians still see climate change as a ‘serious and pressing problem’, up five points since 2013 and nine points since 2012 (Lowy Institute, 2014).

A case study in media-centred climate ‘scepticism’: Andrew Bolt

The role of the media in shaping and influencing public attitudes, and by extension political action, on climate change has been widely discussed (for example, see Boykoff, 2011; Cox, 2010; Hansen, 2010; Lester & Hutchins, 2013; Painter, 2013).

2 But climate change ‘scepticism’ or ‘denialism’ goes beyond the questioning of the science: it is at once a political and psychological phenomenon (Hulme, 2009; Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, 2012; Manne, 2012; Oreskes & Conway, 2010) as well as one that reflects a complex mix of deep seated cultural, political and ideological insecurities that underlie our attitudes to the environment in general and climate in particular (Chakrabarty, 2009; Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982; Merchant, 1993).

With respect to strategies proposed to combat the influence of prominent voices of climate change scepticism despite the significant level of consensus (e.g. see various publications from Climate Council of Australia, 2015), attitude formation more broadly, and to contentious and ideologically confronting issues such as climate change more specifically, is not a simple matter of stronger evidence or more effective communication. According to Festinger’s (1957) theory of ‘cognitive dissonance’, when confronted with information, views or evidence that clash with other strongly held views, we have a powerful motivation to avoid or reduce ‘dissonance’ or discomfort, often leading to illogical rationalisations or maladaptive behaviours (Mooney, 2011). Further, there has been a developing interest in the psychological and ideological genesis of belief systems and their impact on climate change scepticism (for example Bliuc et al., 2015; Kahan, 2014; Markowitz & Shariff, 2012; Roser-Renouf et al., 2014; Wolf & Moser, 2011), leading to the conclusion that other strongly held views (religious, political, ideological) hold significant sway on both the level of scepticism espoused (Donner, 2007; Whitmarsh, 2011) and our assessment or evaluation of evidence.

However, to what extent do the more extreme examples of climate change ‘scepticism’ as espoused by conservative media commentators in particular, reflect or feed these interpretative frames? Using the Australian political and media context, this paper examined the writings of high profile conservative commentator Andrew Bolt whose prolific and strident campaign against the ‘orthodoxy’ of global warming belief has played a major role in the Australian political discourse around climate change policy in recent years. According to a study by Bacon (2013), Bolt and fellow News Limited columnists including Piers Ackerman, Miranda Devine, Tim Blair and Terry McCrann, have been cultivated by Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited publications, to foster a highly inflammatory and controversial agenda which has had the effect of ‘successfully turning climate science reporting into a battleground’ (p. 113). This phenomenon has been noted elsewhere (e.g. Boykoff, 2013; Oreskes & Conway, 2010) and Bolt’s arguments and approach are consistent with the general denialist strategy as mapped by Farmer and Cook (2013).

Andrew Bolt is worthy of study for a number of reasons. He is touted as having ‘Australia’s most read political blog’ and his regular newspaper column is syndicated in several Australian capital and regional newspapers. He hosts his own weekly political talk show, The Bolt Report, and has a nightly segment on radio 2GB. He is reportedly a particular favourite of powerful Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart who describes him as ‘one of Australia’s best journalists’ (Crikey.com, 2011). He is unapologetically partisan in his views, and both his columns and his blog regularly lambast and deride the actions of ‘the Left’ while sparing any similar level of critique for the conservative side of politics. He consciously flouts the norms of journalist balance, and his polemical style, it could be argued, is a characteristic that endears him to his audience.

3 In terms of the overall volume of populist ‘debate’, Bolt plays a significant role as an agent of climate change denialism in Australia. Bacon’s (2011) study of Australian media coverage of climate change for example, estimated that Bolt accounted for almost half of the number of words in articles written on climate change, climate science and climate policy in the Murdoch-owned Herald Sun newspaper, 96% of which as negatively framed. In terms of his reach and impact, Crikey.com’s 2011 Power Index named Bolt as its number 1 ‘megaphone’, stating that:

No other commentator has been as successful at undermining public trust in the science of man-made climate change and whipping up opposition to a carbon tax (Knott, 2011).

Fig 1: Screen shot from Andrew Bolt’s blog http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/ Even a casual scroll through his daily blog gives the unmistakable impression of the vociferousness of Bolt’s campaign against the global warming ‘orthodoxy’ and his crusade against the ‘hypocrisy’, ‘folly’ and false prophesies of those he derides as ‘warmists’ or ‘eco-fundamentalists’. This can initially be evidenced by the sheer number of daily posts and weekly columns dedicated to different aspects of the topic (see Fig 2 for a screenshot from his blog site of the topic categories), his preferred sources, his choices of ‘straw men’ held up to repeated mockery and derision as well as the hyperbolic and polemical tenor of his language, particularly in the article headlines. Bolt’s fixation on climate change, has been described by one commentator as a form of ‘religious fanaticism’ (Mayne, 2015).

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Fig 2: A screenshot of Andrew Bolt’s blog categories Source: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/ This study examined Bolt’s Herald Sun columns, blog and selected blog post comments from several perspectives. It used the Leximancer text analytics program to examine the columns for the manner in which Bolt discursively constructs the ‘orthodoxy’ of climate science and the scientific consensus on climate change as well as the claims and ideological agendas of those advocating policy action. The blogs and selected reader comments were coded manually for both evidence of these same themes, the level of genuine debate with the author’s position and the tone of the language and rhetorical strategies used. I was also interested in any apparent differences between the newspaper columns, written for a more generalized, and perhaps less committed, readership, and the blog posts, written for

5 a more specialised, committed and engaged audience. These columns are important as they give both prominence and authority to Bolt as an anointed political and social commentator for the popular and widely read Melbourne tabloid, the Herald Sun.

Leximancer mapping of the Herald Sun columns A corpus of Bolt’s newspaper columns was downloaded from the ProQuest ANZ Newsstand database using the search terms ‘climate’, ‘global warming’ and ‘scien*’ (kw), ‘Andrew Bolt’ (au) and Herald Sun (pub) and returned 617 results between the years 2001 and 2015. The search specified the Herald Sun publication specifically as these columns are syndicated in several other Australian major newspapers owned by News Limited, but are often republished with different headlines. The ‘hits’ were edited to remove the identifying metadata and then uploaded into the Leximancer text analytics program to map the conceptual relationships (Leximancer.com., 2014).

Leximancer is an Australian-designed software program that uses a word occurrence and co-occurrence algorithmic matrix to automatically generate thematic and conceptual relationships from a corpus of texts without the need for interpretative coding from the researcher. Based on content analysis methodology, Leximancer generates a two dimensional map that gives an overview of the thematic patterns and semantic categories that exist within the text (Angus, Rintel, & Wiles, 2013; Smith & Humphreys, 2006). The resulting output allows a researcher to not only ‘see’ the various intersections and relationships, but to interrogate both the direct and indirect patterns at the level of sentences and paragraphs for nuance of meaning, for less obvious relationships and for instances where the semantic context may be ambiguous. The software developers argue that because the text itself generates the output, researchers are prevented from ‘fixating on any particular anecdotal evidence that may be atypical or erroneous’ (Smith & Humphreys, 2006, p. 262). This enables qualitative analysis to be generated from a quantitative base.

After the initial run of the Bolt corpus, concepts such as climate and change (climate change), global and warming (global warming) and carbon and tax (carbon tax) were compounded to allow a closer differentiation from the slightly different uses of the individual terms. A number of variations of particular reoccurring thesaurus terms such as temperature/temperatures, sea/seas and fact/facts were merged in order to simplify the map. The ‘stability’ of the map was also tested.

Reading the initial concept map In Leximancer, the relative strength and significance of the themes is visually coded as a heat map, the ‘hottest’ being in red. The theme size can be adjusted using a slider to provide either a more specific or broader view, the effect being to reconfigure the concepts into either smaller, more specific themes, or larger, more general ones. The result is that some themes will disappear while new ones will emerge. The themes names are automatically generated and represent the most frequent and connected concept within that circle.

At the default level of 33%, the most prominent theme of the corpus was warming, followed in order of strength by year, carbon, seas, facts, ABC, green, instead, power, people, Labor, Australia and political. Figures 3 and 4 show screenshots of the initial output of the data as both a ‘concept map’ and a ‘concept cloud’. Within

6 each theme, the most significant concepts can be identified by both the size and the proximity of the individual concept nodes to each other. Those with the strongest direct connections have visible links similar to the way in which molecules in a chemical compound chain are represented.

Within the warming theme for example, the concepts of ‘warming’, ‘global’, ‘global warming’ and ‘cause’ comprise the largest cluster of overlapping or closely related concepts (see Fig 3). This is followed by ‘climate’, ‘change’, ‘world’, ‘climate change’ and ‘science’. A third cluster comprises ‘IPCC’, ‘temperature’ and ‘scientists’ and this is closely aligned with ‘evidence’ and ‘data’.

Figure 3: Initial Leximancer concept map of Bolt column corpus set at theme size 33% The alternate ‘concept cloud’ view (see Fig 4) allows you to see more clearly the relative spatial positioning of the concepts and the direct links emanating from the dominant themes. From the perspective of the focus of this paper, what is most striking is manner in which the concepts of ‘scare’, ‘tell’, ‘real’ and ‘faith’ in particular, radiate in a direct line from the various concepts closely clustered around ‘warming’. While this is not unexpected given Bolt’s stance, it is evidence of the consistent focus of the columns over the period of the data (2001-2015) and the manner in which his ‘crusade’ against the ‘warmists’ has been rhetorically constructed.

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Figure 4: Initial Leximancer ‘concept cloud’ of Bolt column corpus set at theme size 33% Another of the initially dominant themes is carbon and it incorporates the concepts of ‘carbon’, ‘emissions’, ‘carbon tax’, ‘tax’ and ‘debate’. When you inspect the sample text generating these concepts, the ‘debate’ in question refers to both the contention of whether the science is ‘settled’ and the political debate over Kevin Rudd’s proposed emissions trading scheme (ETS) in 2009 and the so-called ‘carbon tax’ implemented by the Gillard government in 2011. In both cases, this is framed in a highly political and binary manner: ‘warmists’ versus ‘sceptics’, left versus right, elite versus the average man in the street, free speech versus ‘orthodoxy’. This is also evidenced by the proximity of the carbon theme to the political theme, and if you enlarge the theme size marginally to 40%, the political theme disappears and is subsumed into a larger carbon theme.

The theme of seas as the next strongest, speaks to the prominence of Bolt’s oft- repeated dissent from the claims of mainstream science that sea levels are rising and that ice caps are melting. The concepts of ‘claims’ and ‘latest’ are closely aligned here, indicative of the strength of Bolt’s framing of arguments made by the ‘warmists’ as being merely the ‘latest’ in a succession of what he labels ‘dud predictions’, a tactic which serves to rhetorically delegitimise the evidence, without reference to its substance or context.

8 Also of interest is that the seas and carbon themes are disconnected in the corpus map although the scientific literature argues that warming and the associated weather impacts are closely related to the absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans. The nuance of this argument is absent.

While somewhat weaker within the initial concept map, the theme of facts is interesting. It is directly connected to the concept of ‘warming’ yet more closely thematically positioned to ‘Flannery’1 , ‘Age’ (the rival Fairfax newspaper), ‘claimed’ and ‘wrong’. The definition of what constitutes a ‘fact’ in climate science or climate change advocacy plays strongly in Bolt’s framing of ‘scepticism’, and the ‘facts’ around carbon emissions and their impacts are the most hotly contested. The legitimacy of any ‘fact’ is framed as being relative to the political or ideological leaning of the agent espousing the claim. In one example, Bolt demands of Tim Flannery:

I mean, shouldn’t a scientist be in the facts business? (‘Tim’s Science Fiction’ 14 October, 2005).2

While casting derision on Flannery’s and the IPCC’s version of the ‘facts’, Bolt is happy to uncritically promote the interpretations provided by those scientists with whom he agrees. The ‘facts’, as advanced by the ‘warmists’, are framed as either deliberate lies cooked up to scare the general public for a range of nefarious political, ideological or unethical scientific purposes, or are either misinterpretations or gross exaggerations that are easily countered by either the common sense view (it’s snowing so where’s the warming?), Bolt’s countervailing ‘facts’, and the oft repeated examples of ‘dud predictions’ and pseudo religious environmental fanaticism. For example (my highlights):

“ … belated recognition by sceptics that climate change is not a fiction disseminated by doomsayers.” Nonsense. Consult not their faith but my facts, and look at the graph on the right, showing Victoria's annual rainfall from 1900 to 2005, as measured by the Weather Bureau (‘Dryness as usual’, 26 Oct, 2006).

Confirming what I wrote on Wednesday, Reuters added: “The IPCC is . . . set to predict sea level rises this century of between 28 and 43cm . . . a lower band than forecast in the 2001 report.” So, how could a dean of science at a top university exaggerate so recklessly? Answer: because global warming is a religion, so facts don't count. Beware (‘Take a long, cold shower’, 2 February, 2007).

Moving the visible concepts slider from zero to 100%, tells a slightly different story emerges. While the strongest concepts already noted appear first, at 14% the ‘facts’ concept (facts theme) emerges, while at 16%, ‘carbon’ and ‘emissions’ (carbon theme) appear before any of the remaining concepts in the warming theme. It would seem that while these concepts are more strongly bonded to the localised concepts in their themes (rather like a magnetic field via their semantic relationships), they are

1 Prof Tim Flannery is a prominent climate change activist and science communicator. He was the head of the Climate Commission, a body set up by the Gillard Labor government to communicate climate science in an accessible way. He was sacked after the election of the Abbott government in 2013. He is a former Australian of the Year. 2 Text samples from the Bolt columns and posts will cite the title and publication date. All can be found at http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

9 stronger in terms of their presence in the corpus overall than some others in the dominant theme. In other words, ‘facts’ as a concept is more significant than initially thought. Interestingly it is located a long way from ‘evidence’ indicating that Bolt constructs these separately.

While the default settings of the map give an initial picture of the distribution and relationship of the concepts and themes, as you enlarge or reduce the theme size from the default 33%, the configuration of the themes will alter, with some disappearing and new ones emerging. The concepts remain static but are subsumed into the new, larger or smaller themes. This is a useful perspective. For example, when the theme size is enlarged to 60% (see Fig 5), not only is there a more prominent overlap with warming, encompassing themes such as ‘scare’, ‘latest’, ‘real’, ‘told’ and ‘claims’, but the seas theme disappears and concepts including ‘ice’ and ‘seas’ and ‘ABC’ become part of the facts theme. The Australian national broadcaster is regularly derided by Bolt for its ‘leftist bias’ and its failure to give equal time to sceptics in its reporting, a claim not supported by regular audits of ABC content.

Fig 5: Bolt concept map at 60% theme size Finally, a notable absence is the concept of ‘environment’. A manual search indicated minimal use of the word although its derivatives (‘environmentalists’, ‘environmental’) were occasionally present, usually negatively framed. While ‘planet’ and ‘save’ are present, they are closely situated to other concepts indicating doubt, such as ‘least’, ‘week’, ‘sure’ and ‘told’. This indicates the absence of a broader, more nuanced argument for ‘saving the planet’ and a short-term focus on supposed ‘inconsistencies’, economic ‘vandalism’ and ‘unnecessary’ inconveniences of carbon abatement policies. A notable long running rejoinder of the blog posts, for

10 example, is ‘Save the planet: …’, a headline always accompanied by an ironic subtitle:

Save the planet! Exterminate the camels (11 June, 2011).

Save the planet! Check termite farts (26 May, 2009).

Save the planet! Pass on your vibrator to a stranger (12 February, 2010).

Examining the Bolt columns through the ‘sentiment lens’ The ‘sentiment lens’ function of Leximancer allows comparison of the relative strength of positive (favorable) and negative (unfavorable) sentiment related to concepts and words within a data set as measured by a z-score. Table 1 gives a snapshot of the relative sentiment of some important concepts with samples of the keywords with which they are most frequently related. The count is the raw number of times that concepts and words co-occur. The related terms illustrate the extent of their co-occurrence with other concepts.

Table 1: Sentiment lens output of key concepts and related words

11 More detailed information can be gleaned by clicking on the specific concept in the concept summary accompanying the map (see Fig 6). For example, ‘warming’ is shown to occur 100% of the time with ‘global warming’, 57% of the time with ‘faith’ and 52% of the time with ‘scare’.

Figure 6: Concept summary and sentiment lens The sample text function allows you to interrogate and verify the context of these relationships. While there is a significant difference in the measured sentiment leanings of some concepts that speaks for itself (e.g. ‘climate change’, ‘warming’, ‘scientists’), others are less obvious. In the link between ‘Abbott’ and ‘faith’, for example, Bolt uses the term ‘faith’ favourably when discussing the virtue inherent in Abbott’s Christian beliefs, or to chastise opponents who have derided Abbott for his Christianity (his political nickname being ‘the mad monk’).

This laugh-at-the-Jesus-freak party then raged on over at the websites of The Age and SMH, where covens of warming bigots howled at Abbott's claim, convinced by their deepest prejudices that he must be wrong. … And why did hundreds of Age and SMH readers, on hearing the truth from Abbott, scream that he was blinded by his mad faith? Bigotry is on the hoof, I'm afraid, whipped on by a new faith more hostile to truth than is Abbott or any other good Christian (‘Warmists toast Abbott on the fires of their bigotry’, 12 May, 2010).

In contrast, ‘faith’ is used pejoratively in the context of what Bolt argues is the ‘orthodoxy’ of those who unquestioningly accept the science of global warming, the

12 need to implement carbon reduction measures, or any need to ‘save the planet’. Abbott’s religious faith is used as evidence of his ‘real world’ perspectives, in comparison with those of the ‘covens of warming bigots’ espousing the ‘warmist faith’ framed in one sense as just another fashionable hobbyhorse, and in another as a dangerous ideology with totalitarian aspirations. In one post that generated a record 311 comments Bolt curiously cites former Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, on the science of global warming. In this context, religious faith is a virtue, but ‘faith’ in the authority of climate science is a sin, unless it supports the sceptical position.

Cardinal George Pell can recognise a religious movement when he sees one, and being a rationalist can also see where the global warming faith is weak: ‘The complacent appeal to scientific consensus is simply one more appeal to authority, quite inappropriate in science or philosophy.’ (‘Cardinal spots the green sins against reason’ 27 Oct 2011).

In the Bolt narrative, ‘sceptics’ are framed as the persecuted dissidents, as martyrs to science and reason and akin to Galileo for daring to question the prevailing orthodoxy – a curious analogy since Galileo’s views ultimately triumphed because they were supported by observation rather than blind belief. Those who question ‘sceptics’ are part of a ‘cargo cult’ and with a ‘green totalitarian itch’, guilty of ‘groupthink’ and seeking to unilaterally impose their ‘eco-fundamentalist’, ‘anti- humanist’ views to restrict personal freedoms – whether these be to drive cars, to eat meat, to exploit resources or to pursue individual economic advancement. This is an interesting inversion of the framing of science and religion: science is accused of imposing penances for traducing its orthodoxies. Those who support science are ‘bigots’.

YET I think we have here an insight into a key failing of so many grand schemes of the Left to improve resistant humans or build for them someone else's idea of the perfect society. … What a buzz for the closet totalitarian then, to bully other people “for their own good” in this case, to “save the planet” (‘Norfolk Island green ration is ludicrous’, 3 Nov, 2010).

Like ‘faith’, ‘science’ is treated both favorably and unfavorably depending on its context. When citing examples of contrary ‘evidence’, usually conveniently cherry- picked and often sourced from other sceptical websites, science is framed as reliable and evidence-based. Bolt conveys the illusion of informed and rational engagement with the data by appropriating the language, jargon and authority of science, by providing detailed explanations, references and graphs. He positions himself as ‘an Australian who respects reason and evidence’ (‘Join our global conspiracy, 13 November, 2009). However, when climate scientists, politicians or journalists promote the consensus view, science is accused of having been corrupted, its traditional raison d’être ‘slimed’.

But in science, how can anyone be neutral about truth? If Peacock concludes GM crops are safe, those who disagree shouldn't say he's biased, but prove him wrong. Except he's not, is he? How many scientific debates are corrupted like this? Well, the one on man-made global warming for a start. Science must be saved from brawls in which dissenters are damned, not disproved. We must say no to the green slime (‘No rhyme to this kind of slime’, 17 Mar, 2006).

Bolt is not averse to ‘sliming’ when it suits his own argument, however.

13 It is an indictment of the West’s intelligentsia that Ehrlich is not only still taken seriously, but rewarded well for scaring us stupid - and stupidly. …That explains Tim Flannery, Al Gore and David Suzuki, all made rich by predicting our doom to the teacher-preacher class, which likes to think it can see what the masses can't, and likes even more an excuse to control that mob’s more unruly appetites (‘If Ehrlich looked starved, I’d take him more seriously’, 2 Nov, 2011).

‘Proof’, ‘evidence’ and ‘faith’ are malleable concepts depending on your ideological worldview.

Exploring the Bolt blog

This study also explored the Bolt blog running on the Herald Sun website since August 2006. The evolution of what Singer (2005) labels ‘j-blogs’, (that is, blogs written by journalists employed by mainstream media organisations), has been noted as an important marker of the ‘third age of political communication’ (Blumler & Kavanagh, 1999) and provides a forum for more personal engagement with readers via a moderated comment facility – the Herald Sun, for example, invites readers to ‘talk to your journalists’. The blog differs somewhat in both style from the opinion column in that it is more personal in tone and more ‘bottom up’ than ‘top down’. It regularly links to, and comments on, internet-based information rather than traditional ‘elite’ journalistic sources. Links and arguments are regularly provided by readers and are denoted with the by-line ‘thanks to reader [name]’. This enables ‘passive news consumers [to become] … active news producers’ (Haas, 2005, p. 388), providing a sense of engagement and empowerment.

While both the fragmentation and democratic possibilities of blogs in our ‘post- broadcast’ media landscape (Prior, 2007) have been variously argued, blogs can create what has been variously labeled an ‘echo chamber’, an ‘information cocoon’ (Sunstein, 2009) or a ‘cyber ghetto’ (Farmer & Cook, 2013). The effect can be to stymie rather than facilitate genuine debate because it:

… actually walls off users from one another merely consuming news that mesh with their worldview and ideology (Boykoff, 2011, p. 171).

Andrew Bolt is a prolific blogger – while I’ve only logged those related to climate change, he posts in the vicinity of 300-400 per month on all topics. He sees his blog as the opportunity to provide readers with alternative viewpoints not countenanced by more ‘orthodox’ media. For example, he notes:

… [blogs] can give like-minded readers a place to meet, to find encouragement and ammunition. (‘One million blogging warnings to a lazy media’, 1 August, 2008).

‘Debate’ in the Bolt blog and reader comments To get a sense of the nature of the Bolt blogs on climate change, I manually trawled posts from selected months around pivotal political events related to climate change politics or policy. In each of the sample months, reader responses attached to those climate change-themed posts generating the highest number of comments were manually coded for their themes and the extent to which they were either favorably or unfavorably disposed to the post’s sentiment. Table 2 outlines the results. The headlines showcase Bolt’s rhetorical style.

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