debating global warming in media discussion forums: strategies enacted by "persistent deniers" and implications for schooling

abstract

newspapers and other media are often used as a source of information on science issues, both by the public and teachers in classrooms. over six months, we collected discussions of global warming issues from the online forums of a national newspaper. our analysis of these contributions suggests there is a considerable effort in these forums, especially from certain individual posters, to detract from the arguments in support of global warming by using a variety of strategies. this paper summarizes strategies employed by these frequent posters and discusses how we see many of them emerging from traditional classroom science environments.