Epistemic Communities in Climate Change Communication: Mapping a Knowledge Network
Written by Leonie Akkerman
Leonie completed her Research Master’s in Modern History and International Relations at the University of Groningen in 2025.
Abstract
Climate communication is at a crisis, with denialism and skepticism increasingly present in the public and political sphere. This thesis maps a knowledge network of experts working in climate communication. It adopts a constructivist approach to pose that climate communication is key to shifting norms and values related to climate issues, which can co-determine the boundaries of political and social action. It makes use of cleavage theory and epistemic community theory to argue that climate communication could be a transnational solution to a transnational problem. With the methodology of social network analysis (SNA), the thesis maps a knowledge network of actors working with climate communication. 27 participants from 5 different countries (United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands) are included in the analysis by means of the snowball interviewing method. A network is mapped using Social Network Visualiser v3.1. The results demonstrate that experts working in climate communication have formed a transnational network sharing knowledge, experience, and ideas. Further research could determine the methods with and extent to which actors disseminate knowledge.
Keywords: epistemic communities, climate communication, social network analysis (SNA), cleavage theory, transnationalism
Introduction
Climate communication is at a crisis. According to Arnold (2018), “climate change is no longer a global crisis that has to be dealt with, but is just one more topic in the arena of partisanship and advancing a political ideology” (p. 96). This thesis addresses the increased difficulty of communicating about climate issues. The topic of climate change can evoke emotional reactions, with anti-climate narratives proliferating in the public and political debate (Rodrigo-Alsina, 2019; Badullovich, 2022). The increasing transnational divide could play a role in turning climate change into a positional issue, amplifying anti-climate sentiments through their link with ideology and identity (Gemenis et al., 2012). This creates difficulty in bringing up the topic, let alone having a meaningful conversation; not just for policymakers and interest groups, but for individuals too.
This thesis follows a constructivist approach and poses that a shift in narrative can co determine the boundaries of political and social action. Knowledge on how to communicate about climate change could help pro-environmental narratives to proliferate in the debate, paving the way for more climate policy support to limit global heating to 1.5℃. Following this lens, it is relevant to determine to what extent a network exists with experts on climate communication. Following epistemic community theory (Haas, 1992), experts knowing how to communicate about climate change could form a knowledge network that can be diffused and applied in a myriad of ways. To the best of my knowledge, analysing to what extent a knowledge network exists in terms of climate communication, that aims to produce, diffuse, and apply knowledge on climate communication strategies, has not been done before. This thesis aims to address this niche because such a network is imperative in pushing forward climate narratives that are required to create sufficient policy support to reach mitigation goals. Therefore, this thesis asks: to what extent does a transnational knowledge network exist that diffuses knowledge on climate communication strategies?
The thesis performs a social network analysis using the snowball interviewing method to map experts working in the field of climate communication. The thesis is built as follows. In chapter 2, recent developments in climate communication literature are reviewed, and to what extent increasing transnational polarisation poses a new challenge for it. In chapter 3, the present study aiming to identify and map a knowledge network of climate communication experts is presented, for which epistemic community theory is used as a theoretical baseline. In chapter 4, the methodology of the network analysis with the snowball interviewing method is described. In chapter 5, the results map the identified knowledge network, as well as approaches that fall outside of it. Chapter 6 provides a discussion of the results going beyond the research question, followed by a reflection to what extent the results correspond with cleavage theory and epistemic community theory, and limitations plus directions for further research.
