Andrew Bolt and the discourse of ‘scepticism’ in the Australian climate change debate : a ‘distant reading’ approach using Leximancer

In Australia since 2007, attempts to deal with anthropogenic climate change have become highly politicised, politically poisonous and discursively fractious. Central to the toxic politics has been a vocal media campaign from so-called ‘sceptics’ and ‘denialists’ who have largely framed their opposition to carbon reduction policies in terms of the scientific basis of climate change in general, and the economic implications, in particular. Using the text analytics program Leximancer, this paper applies a mixed methods approach of ‘distant’ and more traditional ‘close’ reading to examine a large sample corpus of the columns of prolific Australian conservative commentator and climate sceptic Andrew Bolt for the manner in which he discursively constructs his views on climate change. It then discusses the extent to which Bolt’s self-labeled ‘scepticism’ is consistent with both the traditional application of scientific scepticism and the broader strategies of climate change denialism and its role in legitimizing doubts about the both the veracity of climate science and scientific consensus. The Leximancer analysis works on a large scale corpus that demonstrates the manner in which Bolt’s arguments are inconsistent with genuine scientific scepticism, but are examples of denialism that is largely ideologically driven.