Reddit's climate change debate rarely cites science

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-05-08 04:00

International

Photo by Brett Jordan

In twelve years of Reddit climate change discussion, only 4-6% of the posted links point to scientific sources, new research shows. While the number of scientific links have increased in recent years, they're dwarfed by the number of links to news sites and other social media posts. Scientific links are more likely to be posted by users who also post centre-left political sources, and less so by those posting more polarized sources.

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Journal/
conference: PLOS Climate

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: ISI Foundation, Italy

Funder: The authors acknowledge support from the Lagrange Project of the Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation (ISI Foundation, to PC, MT, KK, DP, YM) funded by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Torino (Fondazione CRT), Italy.

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