“Environmental politics is organized around the interaction between groups supporting the dominant framing of a particular policy arena and alternative challengers. The main dominant actors usually include industry organizations and their trade associations, professional bodies, government actors, and advocacy organizations. Alternative challengers might include social justice activists and environmentalists. Struggles over public policy take the form of a contest over the appropriate field framing and involve building institutions (such as cultural, educational, and media organizations) that can act to maintain or transform the popular mentality so that the desired framing is accepted as common sense in that particular arena.” In this article, scholars share their experiences in “bringing sociological analysis to the Senate floor in “Web of Denial” speeches rebutting climate change skeptics and revealing how echo chambers and network effects stifle the spread of scientific knowledge.”
