Advanced Quantitative Methods
PhD Researcher in Advanced Quantitative Methods (ESRC 1+3)
Q-Step Centre, College of Social Sciences and International Studies, University of Exeter
Start date: September 2018
Research topic: Climate change believers and sceptics: a text-mining approach to measure their impact on the political discourse
A growing interdisciplinary literature examines the role of industry actors and conservative think-tanks in shaping the climate change debate and promoting inaction by manufacturing doubt about anthropogenic climate change. The aim of my research is to quantify the influence of these sceptics on the political discourse with a text-mining approach. The language of the sceptics is to be identified by analysing not only documents of sceptics but also of the environmental movement. Distinguishing between the two discourses will allow a nuanced textual exploration of political agendas and provide a framework for measuring the impact of each group on the political debate.
Research supervisors: Dr Travis Coan
Email: m.nanko@exeter.ac.uk