Negotiating the Data Deluge on YouTube: Practices of Knowledge Appropriation and Articulated Ambiguity Around Visual Scenarios of Sea-Level Rise Futures

Abstract

The present study aims at evaluating how YouTube users understand, negotiate and appropriate science-related knowledge on YouTube. It is informed by the qualitative analysis of post-video discussions around visual scenarios of sea-level rise (SLR) triggered by climate change. On the one hand, the SLR maps have an exemplary status as contemporary visualizations of climate change risks, beyond traditional image categories such as scientific or popular imagery. YouTube, on the other hand, is a convenient media environment to investigate the situated appropriation of such visual knowledge, considering its increasing relevance as a navigational platform to provide, search, consume and debate science-related information. The paper draws on media practice theory and operationalizes digital methods and qualitative coding informed by Grounded Theory. It characterizes a number of communicative practices of articulated knowledge appropriation regarding climate knowledge. This includes “locating impacts,” “demanding representation,” “envisioning further,” “debating future action,” “relativizing the information,” “challenging the reality of anthropogenic climate change,” “embedding popular narratives,” “attributing to politics,” and “insulting others.” The article then discusses broader questions posed by the comments and related to the appropriation and discursive negotiation of knowledge within online video-sharing platforms. Ambiguity is identified as a major feature within the practice of science-related information retrieval and knowledge appropriation on YouTube. This consideration then serves as an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between information credibility and knowledge appropriation in the age of the digital. Findings suggest that ambiguity of information can have a positive impact on problem definition, future imagination and the discursive negotiation of climate change.