Marta Pérez de Lope Global Environmental Politics and Policies

When Science Is Framed: Does skeptical message framing of climate science influence public opinion?Abstract: This study explores public opinion's impact of exposure to messages that politicise science of climate change. I focus on Jason Reifler & Toby Bolsen's experimental design that studies how the skeptical framing of messages can affect the public's trust in science. I study this by exposing individuals to an attributive framing which is an argument impugning the motives of scientists by saying they are " cherry-picking " results. This study will be extending research on framing, and motivated reasoning by inducing a skeptical motivation in the opinion formation process. The results show that skeptical message framing of scientists have a backfire effect, where the frame not only does not change the public's opinion, but in fact, it reinforces their belief that scientists are trustworthy to deliver correct and accurate information on climate change. The backfire effect, explored in depth by Jason Reifler & Nyhan Brendan in their previous work (2010), is suggested to be attributed to several factors, from educational background and personal commitment on climate change, to shared environments and limitations of the survey participants. This study concludes that skeptical message framing, on a single stimuli bases, does not seem to be as effective as assumed by some of the literature. Additionally, the findings do not seem to suggest that political ideology polarisation has a prominent role in public's reaction to message framing.