Audiences and their Crises: New Yorkers’ Constructions of Iridescent Climate Change

• In Event: 30607 - Climate Change Unfolding: Power, Privilege and Diverse Experiences of Impacts and Responses

Abstract

Climate change is not one problem; it is a bundle of many. Its iridescence, multiple facets, varying in hue depending on perspective, characterizes struggles over its meaning. Departing from dominant explanations of people’s varied perspectives on climate change as a polarization in attitudes, or contest of multiple constructed frames, I emphasize variation in the interactional settings in which people make claims, particularly how audiences are organized. Leveraging variation in the settings in which New Yorkers made around 35,000 comments on a proposed state plan in 2022, from an online comment form to in-person meetings, I show how people’s bracketing of climate change was shaped by how they conceptualized and perceived their audience. I elaborate on two dimensions in which audiences vary - their presence and whether they interact – yielding four distinct styles of talk to make sense of climate change. When audiences are not present, people make putative claims, imagining the climate-concerned state as either conscientious leaders or distant elites making consequential decisions. Co-presence with state officials cues norms of facework, where individual concerns are raised in polite testimony, culminating in the expression of a plurality of independent themes. One can also respond to others’ claims when co-present, having heard what others say, leading to deliberation focusing on shared concerns. Finally, state officials sought to classify the comments with a struggle over whether to depict the public as sharing concerns, such as reducing emissions, or disagreement, about the pace of change. The imprint of audiences on claims suggests the need for more attention on the everyday, and democratic settings in which people talk about climate change. The salience of people’s claims-making even when in agreement about shared realities, clarifies the warrant of a social constructionist approach to studying climate change.

Author

• Ankit Bhardwaj, Northwestern University