Uncertainty discourses in the context of climate change: a corpus-assisted analysis of UK national newspaper articles
Uncertainty is intrinsic to science, to knowledge acquisition and risk assessment. When communicating about climate change however, uncertainty can be used and understood as ‘not knowing’, i.e. as ignorance. In this article we aim to understand how ‘uncertainty’ is used in a specific cultural and me...
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| Format: | Article |
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De Gruyter
2016
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37495/ |
| _version_ | 1848795471116500992 |
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| author | Collins, Luke C. Nerlich, Brigitte |
| author_facet | Collins, Luke C. Nerlich, Brigitte |
| author_sort | Collins, Luke C. |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Uncertainty is intrinsic to science, to knowledge acquisition and risk assessment. When communicating about climate change however, uncertainty can be used and understood as ‘not knowing’, i.e. as ignorance. In this article we aim to understand how ‘uncertainty’ is used in a specific cultural and media context at two important periods in time. Using a corpus linguistic approach, we examine how ‘uncertainty’ is used in the context of UK press coverage of climate change in 2010 (following ‘Climategate’) and in 2014-15, after the latest IPCC report had been published. We find that after climategate and the (failed) Copenhagen summit ‘uncertainty’ was used to question the authority and credibility of climate science; after the latest IPCC report and in the run-up to the (more successful) Paris summit discussions focused on uncertainties inherent in various climate change mitigation activities and associated with the economy, environment and politics more generally. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:32:37Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-37495 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:32:37Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | De Gruyter |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-374952020-05-04T18:13:48Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37495/ Uncertainty discourses in the context of climate change: a corpus-assisted analysis of UK national newspaper articles Collins, Luke C. Nerlich, Brigitte Uncertainty is intrinsic to science, to knowledge acquisition and risk assessment. When communicating about climate change however, uncertainty can be used and understood as ‘not knowing’, i.e. as ignorance. In this article we aim to understand how ‘uncertainty’ is used in a specific cultural and media context at two important periods in time. Using a corpus linguistic approach, we examine how ‘uncertainty’ is used in the context of UK press coverage of climate change in 2010 (following ‘Climategate’) and in 2014-15, after the latest IPCC report had been published. We find that after climategate and the (failed) Copenhagen summit ‘uncertainty’ was used to question the authority and credibility of climate science; after the latest IPCC report and in the run-up to the (more successful) Paris summit discussions focused on uncertainties inherent in various climate change mitigation activities and associated with the economy, environment and politics more generally. De Gruyter 2016-09-02 Article PeerReviewed Collins, Luke C. and Nerlich, Brigitte (2016) Uncertainty discourses in the context of climate change: a corpus-assisted analysis of UK national newspaper articles. Communications: the European Journal of Communication Research, 41 (3). pp. 291-313. ISSN 1613-4087 Uncertainty; Climate change; Climate science; UK press; Corpus linguistics https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/comm.2016.41.issue-3/commun-2016-0009/commun-2016-0009.xml doi:10.1515/commun-2016-0009 doi:10.1515/commun-2016-0009 |
| spellingShingle | Uncertainty; Climate change; Climate science; UK press; Corpus linguistics Collins, Luke C. Nerlich, Brigitte Uncertainty discourses in the context of climate change: a corpus-assisted analysis of UK national newspaper articles |
| title | Uncertainty discourses in the context of climate change: a corpus-assisted analysis of UK national newspaper articles |
| title_full | Uncertainty discourses in the context of climate change: a corpus-assisted analysis of UK national newspaper articles |
| title_fullStr | Uncertainty discourses in the context of climate change: a corpus-assisted analysis of UK national newspaper articles |
| title_full_unstemmed | Uncertainty discourses in the context of climate change: a corpus-assisted analysis of UK national newspaper articles |
| title_short | Uncertainty discourses in the context of climate change: a corpus-assisted analysis of UK national newspaper articles |
| title_sort | uncertainty discourses in the context of climate change: a corpus-assisted analysis of uk national newspaper articles |
| topic | Uncertainty; Climate change; Climate science; UK press; Corpus linguistics |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37495/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37495/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37495/ |