New article on partisan differences in Congressional floor speeches on climate change, 1996-2015

[Dunlap, Riley]

Some on this list may find a new article, just published online, of interest.  It presents an analysis of Congressional floor speeches dealing with climate change over a two-decade span, and documents evolving partisan differences in the volume and content of the speeches:

Deborah Lynn Guber, Jeremiah Bohr & Riley E. Dunlap (2020) ‘TIME TO WAKE UP’: Climate change advocacy in a polarized Congress, 1996-2015, Environmental Politics, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2020.1786333

Scholars who study the failure of climate change policy in the United States tend to focus on the mechanics of denial and the coordinated efforts of political operatives, conservative think tanks, and partisan news outlets to cast doubt on what has become overwhelming scientific consensus. In contrast, we address a factor that has been understudied until now – the role of climate change advocacy in the U.S. Congress. Using quantitative text analysis on a corpus of floor speeches published in the Congressional Record between 1996 and 2015, we find notable differences in the language partisans use. Democrats communicate in ways that are message-based, emphasizing the weight of scientific evidence, while Republicans tend towards a softer, cue-based narrative based on anecdotes and storytelling. We end with a discussion of what climate change advocates can hope to accomplish through the ‘politics of talk,’ especially in an age of heightened polarization.

If you don't have access to the journal, a pdf is available on each of the authors' ResearchGate pages.

Riley E. Dunlap

Regents Professor of Sociology

and Dresser Professor Emeritus

Department of Sociology

Oklahoma State University

Stillwater, OK  74078

405-744-6105