Contradicting potential climate misinformation during televised debates

Abstract

Experimental research recommends that climate change debaters actively contradict misinformation. This study examines discursively how participants do so during prominent televised Danish debates, that is, how they orient towards elements in other participants’ preceding talk about climate change causes and implications as factually wrong. Three types are considered: (i) contradictions produced by the interviewer in the next turn; (ii) contradictions produced by a co-participant after being allocated the turn by the interviewer; and (iii) contradictions produced by a co-participant in a self-selected turn. Analysis reveals that the contradictions are attuned to and limited by these sequential circumstances. The study overall finds that sequential context significantly impacts climate change debaters’ possibilities for contradicting misinformation; in particular, potential misinformation may be ‘smuggled’ into multi-unit turns, which can prove difficult for co-panelists to confront because of the format’s turn-taking provision.