“Vaccines are 100% safe, and anyone who doubts this is ignorant”: Have you ever come across messages like this during the pandemic crisis a few years ago? If you often feel that certain public debates—such as those on vaccines or the climate crisis—boil down to a black-and-white clash between two sides demanding, with harsh tones, unquestioning allegiance to their view, you're not entirely wrong. We are rightly accustomed to being warned about pseudoscientific misinformation and fake news, and much research has been devoted to identifying the characteristics of such messages in order to debunk them. Yet, even those "on the side of science" sometimes use a form of polarized communication that doesn't align with a genuinely scientific approach, which should foster critical thinking and the ability to evolve over time. A certain type of scientific message, like the example above, often amplifies these forms of polarization by reinforcing extreme viewpoints, deepening divisions between different audience segments. Therefore, it is important to recognize not only scientific misinformation but also polarized scientific information.
A new study just published in the Journal of Science Communication (JCOM) elucidated, based on available scientific literature, the characteristics of polarized scientific digital messages, proposing a system of codification for identifying and characterizing polarized discourses in science communication digital messages.
