Hyperrationality and Rhetorical Constellations in Digital Climate Change Denial: A Multi-Methodological Analysis of the Discourse of Watts up with That

Authors

Denise Tillery, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Emma Frances Bloomfield, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-20-2022

Publication Title

Technical Communication Quarterly

Volume

31

Issue

4

First page number:

356

Last page number:

373

Abstract

Using a multi-methodological approach, we analyze member comments in Watts Up With That (WUWT), a climate skeptical Facebook group. Quantitative topic modeling revealed that members claim hyperrationality to undermine climate science. Science-based terms were often connected to other topics, such as immigration and LGBTQ+ rights, creating rhetorical constellations that shifted rhetoric from technical spaces into political and ideological ones. These findings have implications for dealing with the challenge of misinformation’s circulation on social media.

Keywords

Hyperrationality; climate change skepticism; digital rhetoric; mixed methods; rhetorical constellations

Disciplines

English Language and Literature

File Format

PDF

File Size

1964 KB

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Repository Citation

Tillery, D., Bloomfield, E. F. (2022). Hyperrationality and Rhetorical Constellations in Digital Climate Change Denial: A Multi-Methodological Analysis of the Discourse of Watts up with That. Technical Communication Quarterly, 31(4), 356-373.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2021.2019317