UFRGS 2025
Destructive Polarisation in Climate Debates: An Exploration Using the Practice Mapping Approach
Axel Bruns
- 9 Oct. 2025 – Keynote presented at the AoIR 2025 satellite event "Disinformation, Social Media Platforms, and the Climate Crisis" at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre
Presentation Slides
Abstract
Debates about the impacts of climate change, and about potential strategies for mitigating them, have long been regarded as polarised. Polarisation as such is not necessarily inherently problematic, if the clear presentation of alternative options enables citizens and decision-makers to decide on the best path forward – but climate change debates often exhibit many of the symptoms of what we have described as *destructive* polarisation, turning agonistic discussions into antagonistic and divisive struggles and undermining any progress towards broader consensus or at least compromise. These symptoms of destructive polarisation include (a) breakdown of communication; (b) discrediting and dismissing of information; (c) erasure of complexities; (d) exacerbated attention to and space for extreme voices; and (e) exclusion through emotions.
This keynote introduces and illustrates these symptoms, and introduces the new methodological framework of practice mapping as an approach towards their identification and analysis in contemporary public debates on social media platforms. Advancing beyond conventional network mapping, practice mapping identifies groups of actors with shared discursive practices, and thereby enables an assessment of whether and to what extent the rhetorical approaches of these groups exhibit symptoms of destructive polarisation.
