%0 Journal Article
%T Party Elites or Manufactured Doubt? The Informational Context of Climate Change Polarization
%A Dominik A. Stecula
%A Eric Merkley
%J Science Communication
%@ 1552-8545
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1075547018760334
%X Americans polarized on climate change despite decreasing uncertainty in climate science. Explanations focused on organized climate skeptics and ideologically driven motivated reasoning are likely insufficient. Instead, Americans may have formed their attitudes by using party elite cues. We analyze the content of over 8,000 print, broadcast, and cable news stories. We find that coverage became increasingly partisan as climate change rose in salience, but climate skeptics received scant attention. Democratic messages were more voluminous and consistently pro¨Cclimate science, while Republican messages have been scarcer and ambiguous until recently. This suggests Republican voters took cues from Democratic elites to reject climate science
%K climate change
%K mass media
%K polarization
%K climate denial
%K media portrayal of science
%K psychology of communication
%K environmental communication
%K public perception of political issues
%K political parties
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1075547018760334