Go try posting a skeptic comment at realclimate.com or skeptical science.com. It will be deleted post haste. Then try the opposite at climateaudit.com or climatedepot.com. I think you will find that those promoting AGW are much less tolerant of dissenting views than are the skeptics.
JC _ l liked your posting. Please see if you can remember the textbook with the different political philosophies.
Sometimes the same commenter will use different accounts and names to post comments to a site. I've seen this numerous times.
And here's a link discussing conservative commenter manipulation of Digg.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/09...
I'm a liberal, so there is probably some confirmation bias on my part, but it really does seem like skeptics/deniers overwhelm comments sections (even in Yahoo Answers).
And the thumbs down votes start now.....
Various people that I have known in one way or another on line and elsewhere have remarked for years that internet comments in all sorts of forums about politics have been dominated by conservative points of view and this has been ascribed to all sorts of reasons. More than once I heard it said that liberals were '''all' (sic) on welfare" and had to go to the library to use the internet, on other occasions-by slightly more intelligent people-that liberals dominated the other media so conservatives took the internet, and by others of more of a psychological bent that mainstream liberals tended to be more soft spoken and submissive. This is neither here nor there but I also heard more than once that some people thought in the morning hours conservatives were less likely to be on line because they all had jobs to go to and were working, while liberals were a bunch of welfare slugs with more leisure time during normal working hours. That was some good comedy.
I don't think any of that is true, but it is interesting, and if skeptics and deniers about climate change do indeed tend to be political conservatives your observation about on line commentary would seem to line up with what many people have already observed about internet remarks in other arenas. I've noticed in the area newspapers I read that letters to the editor seem to favor conservative philosophies more than liberal.
Of course, there is nothing scientific about those observations-or yours and mine-but it sure seems that way. Maybe a good corollary would be the dominance of liberal influence in the media overall that was observed some years ago, before the rise of Fox in the U.S. There were some polls done back then-and I'm sorry, I can't recall who did them-that indicated the perceived predominance of liberal philosophies were being overstated.
One thing that is interesting to me is that-in the United States at least-when conservatives were complaining about liberals dominating the media the most was when liberals were out of power politically. Now here in the U.S. the liberals are in power and it seems to many the conservatives are more active in the media.
Once again commenting just on the U.S. outlook, it also seems as if the prevalence of individuals commenting in the media can lull at least some into a false sense of security. In our election last fall, many conservatives were pretty confident that Obama was going to be denied a second term, and greeted the outcome of the election with shock and dismay. So maybe we shouldn't be too confident in what might be described as white noise.
There was a textbook opinion I one read in a government course that described political philosophies in one chapter; Analyzing the psychology behind those philosophies and discussing the passion that often went along with extremism, the text commented that there is a psychological component that feeds on itself which leads some people to believe that their political opinions are shared by most other people-and are therefore truly 'mainstream,' but that most people are too submissive, complacent or even frightened to express those opinions, therefore justifying individual or small groups acts which are contrary to social mores. E.G. abortion clinic bombings, etc. that the perpetrators see as 'heroic' efforts that will bring about desired changes. If I recall correctly, the text went on to discuss how that psychology tended to influence most people (in far less dramatic ways) that their beliefs were shared by far more people than statistical analysis indicated...that their beliefs were 'right' because they were being reinforced frequently enough to encourage activism.
You can see how that would work in a political movement, helping it to gain momentum. At least you can if you are a behavioral psychologist. Haha. And with the rise of the internet as well as the growth of editorial journalism (i.e. Fox, CNBC, et al) you can also see how that reinforcement occurs more frequently, thus strengthening the beliefs.
I think climate change is a perfect storm of that psychological take and a fascinating study of not only human behavior, but also how group momentum operates. Right now you can't really say which direction the momentum will eventually shift to, but I think it is premature to draw any conclusions about what the majority of the comments we might perceive seem to indicate.
Yes, and its no surprise.
The internet has given the formerly "silent" majority an UNEDITED voice.
Media moguls who refused to take notice of the trend are slowly being eliminated by natural attrition or promoted to out of the loop positions.
It is part of the hypocrisy of AGW Deniers that they base their strategy on forming a consensus of political opinion among America's scientifically illiterate demographic while one of their main tactics is to falsely accuse scientists of being part of a political conspiracy.
The media has never been about truth
Could you please name one newspaper in the UK apart from The Daily Mail and The Daily Express that conforms to your bigoted view of the world?
Guardian?
BBC?
Independent?
What nonsense.
I have. I've also noticed that many of the comments to articles about ANYTHING (baseball, golf, astronomy, needlepoint, etc.) are people expressing their hatred of liberals, Barack Obama, etc. Unfortunately many people in our society are filled with hatred.
in the media that allow comments, the overwhelmingly majority are by skeptics/deniers.
