Discursive Strategies in Cross-Cutting Conversations about Climate Change

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Matthias Revers, who continues our focus on polarisation in climate communication. The project sent out a recruitment survey in Germany and the UK to recruit participants with divergent views on climate change, then organised some 40 conversations on Zoom between participants with opposing views, and examined whether such conversations entrenched or weakened disagreements and antipathy between viewpoints. This examined conversational moves (like signalling willingness or interest, and steering the conversation in particular directions), as well as practices of assessment (articulating approval or disapproval), drawing on analytical categories like conversational receptiveness and democratic listening.

Overall, the experiment is working in that it produced growing sympathy between conversation partners, but somewhat paradoxically also entrenched disagreement between their positions – and Matthias now takes us through some choice examples from such conversations. Patronising and one-sided conversations tended to increase antipathy as well as disagreement; a greater sense of empathy and attempts to establish some common ground even in site of disagreement helped generate sympathy between disagreeing conversation partners. Diversions to avoid conflict also helped here. If nothing else, such approaches may help participants to practice agonistic politics.