Shadow Networks, Corporate Mobilization, and the Social Production of Climate Change Skepticism, 1993-2013

• In Event: 169 - Section on Environment and Technology Paper Session. Environment and Institutional Power

Abstract

Widespread doubt in the face of environmental catastrophe and scientific consensus raises important unanswered questions about covert corporate influence, and the diffusion of misinformation into news media and politics. This article addresses these questions, and poses new ones, by examining the influence of corporate mobilization on the rise of climate change skepticism. The data include original social network measures (4,556 denial actors with ties to 164 denial organizations), as well as the entirety of written and verbal texts about climate change from 1993-2013 from every denial organization, three major news outlets, all U.S. Presidents, and every occurrence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Combining network analysis with novel machine learning techniques for large-scale text data, I find that (1) the social structure of the denial field itself, (2) the content of its misinformation, and (3) the magnitude of its external influence in news media and politics, are all predicted by organizational ties to a furtive “shadow network” led by ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers. I develop this shadow network concept, and demonstrate its broader theoretical implications for understanding covert corporate influence, the social production of environmental uncertainty, the privatization of science, and the growing concentration of wealth and power in the United States.

Author

• Justin Farrell, Yale University