Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014)

Abstract This paper assesses whether ExxonMobil Corporation has in the past misled the general public about climate change. We present an empirical document-by-document textual content analysis and comparison of 187 climate change communications from ExxonMobil, including peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents, and paid, editorial-style advertisements (‘advertorials’) in The New York Times . We examine whether these communications sent consistent messages about the state of climate science and its implications—specifically, we compare their positions on climate change as real, human-caused, serious, and solvable. In all four cases, we find that as documents become more…

• EM
  Exxon Mobil Corporation
• HU
  Harvard University
• RF
  Rockefeller Family Fund

  Award: #370-344850RG