Abstract
This a study of how the researchers and staff of CICERO – Center for International Climate Research in Norway, participated in public discourse as expert commentators on the UNFCCC climate negotiations and the reality of anthropogenic climate change. In the Norwegian context CICERO is a visible actor in public discourse on climate change. Furthermore, climate researchers and research organizations such as CICERO produce information essential for how we address climate change. With a foundation in research that offers the Center epistemic authority, the Center has both power and responsibility. I discuss the roles of CICERO and how people at the Center communicated boundaries and connections between the Center, the climate research community, the Center’s lay audience, civil society and politics.
Framed by the history of CICERO and climate research, the main part of my study is a critical discourse analysis of CICERO’s public communications, i.e. popular articles, op-eds and interviews, in the time of the Conference of the Parties 15 in 2009, and the Conference of the Parties 21 in 2015. I find that the Center strongly identified with the climate research community. However, the Center also presented a willingness to collaborate with government and international political decision-makers, as long as the Center perceived these groups to be ready to address climate change. Furthermore, CICERO represented state leaders and other political decision-makers as the most important actors in the face of climate change. Civil society, conversely, was mostly left out of the Center’s commentary, apart from a few references and a temporary willingness to debate climate skeptics in 2009. Thus, the Center made civil society appear irrelevant for climate research and for how we address climate change, apart from as an extension of government-led initiatives. I also find that CICERO presented an ambivalent attitude towards their lay audience who were largely represented as passive recipients of information, which further served to underscore the passivity of civil society.
The analytical traditions that informed my analysis are intellectual history as well as the overlapping fields of science and technology studies and the public communication of science and technology. My primary methodology was critical discourse analysis. For background information I performed semi-structured, open-ended interviews with seven people at CICERO.