Warren Pearce

0000-0001-6884-3854

Senior Lecturer (iHuman, Sociological Studies) (Sociology and social studies of science and technology; Environmental sociology; Communication technology and digital media studies; Environmental communication)

Sheffield

Warren’s research explores how science is used in public debates about politics and policy, with a current focus on three areas: - the use of scientific evidence, advice and assessment in policy work - how digital platforms are changing experts and expertise - the role of images in online science communication He has researched these themes extensively through a series of journal articles examining the public life of climate change. He has also published research on other prominent cases such as plant genome editing, autism, responsible innovation and the use of randomised controlled trials in policy. Warren employs interpretive, digital and comparative research methods, collaborating with information designers to rethink approaches to visualisation for interpretive research. He has published in a wide range of high-impact academic journals across the natural, social and health sciences such as Nature Climate Change, Public Understanding of Science and Policy Sciences.

Publications

Climate change on Twitter: topics, communities and conversations about the 2013 IPCC Working Group 1 report.
Scientific data and its limits: rethinking the use of evidence in local climate change policy
Evidence and meaning in policy making
Reply to 'Clarity of meaning in IPCC press conference'
Tension between scientific certainty and meaning complicates communication of IPCC reports
Communicating climate change: conduits, content, and consensus
Randomised trials in context: practical problems and social aspects of evidence-based medicine and policy
Transparency: issues are not that simple
An open letter to The BMJ editors on qualitative research
Why are NGO s sceptical of genome editing?
Three lessons from evidence-based medicine and policy: increase transparency, balance inputs and understand power
Against the tide of depoliticisation: The politics of research governance
Visual cross-platform analysis: digital methods to research social media images
Beyond counting climate consensus
‘An Inconvenient Truth’: A social representation of scientific expertise.
Learning the lessons of Climategate: A cosmopolitan moment in the public life of climate science
Trouble in the trough: how uncertainties were downplayed in the UK’s science advice on Covid-19
The social media life of climate change: Platforms, publics, and future imaginaries
Autism Scientists’ Reflections on the Opportunities and Challenges of Public Engagement: A Qualitative Analysis
A Reply to Cook and Oreskes on Climate Science Consensus Messaging
NGO perspectives on the social and ethical dimensions of plant genome-editing
Politics of Science and Technology
Is emphasising consensus in climate science helpful for policymaking?
Twitter's retort to Trump: before and after the Paris announcement
The visual vernacular of climate change on Twitter (2016-19)
Visual vernaculars of climate change
Using computer vision to see Google’s visual vernacular of climate change (2008-19)
Why setting a climate deadline is dangerous
What do we know about public attitudes towards experts? Reviewing survey data in the United Kingdom and European Union
Socially-distanced science: how British publics were imagined, modelled and marginalised in political and expert responses to the COVID-19 pandemic
Google Images, cambio climático y la desaparición de los humanos
The new randomised controlled trials (RCT) movement in public policy: challenges of epistemic governance
Evidence and policy: discourses, meanings and practices
Growing polarization around climate change on social media
Three institutional pathways to envision the future of the IPCC
Under What Conditions Is Science Considered Relevant and Authoritative in Policy-Making?