Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Discussions on climate change online reveal how trust, science, and nature events are negotiated through memes, myths, and everyday observations. By analyzing dialogues in a Facebook group, this study explores how contemporary folklore sustains or resists belief in the climate crisis

Paper long abstract

Climate change is a crisis that resists easy comprehension. Its diffuse, global effects and the complexity of the research confirming human influence on the climate mean that public understanding increasingly rests on trust. In the context of today’s wider epistemic crisis, the very reality of the Anthropocene is called into question in multiple ways. Digital media environments, where narratives, memes, and vernacular expressions circulate, have become fertile ground for analyzing how the climate crisis is debated and contested.

This presentation draws on dialogues from a Facebook group where climate change deniers and supporters meet in discussion. Here, references to “nature” emerge as central: everyday observations of weather, dramatic reports of melting glaciers, and images of natural disasters coexist, serving both to reinforce and to reject the findings of climate science. Narratives are infused with conspiratorial elements, modern myths, metaphors, and memes, alongside hypertextual practices of sharing links to research, news, and weather reports.

By examining these exchanges, I ask how digital forms of storytelling and vernacular creativity shape public engagement with the climate crisis. What roles do myths, anecdotes, and memes play in sustaining doubt, affirming belief, or negotiating trust in science? And what can these practices tell us about the function of contemporary folklore in making sense of—yet also resisting—the most urgent crisis of our time?