Strong climate polarisation in the blogging world

The blogging world is characterised by strong polarisation around the issue of climate change. On the one hand, there is the mainstream who support the scientific consensus on climate change, and on the other hand climate sceptics who reject evidence for global warming. Communication scientist Christel van Eck researched polarisation in the climate change blogosphere. 'Information from these polarised blogs flows into the political and public debate, so it's important to understand this world.' Blogosphere. The blogosphere is the network of weblogs, bloggers, commenters, and the audience and the links between them. Christel van Eck is Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) and researches climate change communication and polarisation. She is particularly interested in the role of online media in climate change polarisation. 'The blogosphere is characterised by strong polarisation around the issue of climate change,' says Van Eck. One group of bloggers shares scientific evidence for human caused climate change, while another group opposes this evidence with the message that human caused climate change is not real or not a problem.' Since policymakers and journalists feed on climate blogs to inform themselves, it is important for Van Eck to understand this blogosphere. 'But investigating climate change polarisation in the blogosphere also learns us a lot about climate change polarisation in general and about online polarisation around other social issues.' Why is this polarisation a problem?