Climate science clearly indicates what needs to be done to keep global warming below the Paris agreement goal of 1.5C. The main problem currently preventing the world from achieving this goal is making the political decisions necessary to get there. Currently increasing political polarization, however, makes it difficult for democracies to achieve the compromises that are needed to reduce emissions. Political polarization in current democracies and in their hybrid media systems arises from interactions between three arenas of political communication: policy networks, media discourse and social media. The CLIP project analyzes the degree of polarization of climate politics in these three arenas using novel methods of multilayer social network analysis. We also investigate the relationship of polarization to public opinion on climate change and climate policy output. The analysis covers eight countries: Australia, Canada, Czechia, Finland, Germany, India, Ireland and Sweden.

2024

2028