Information exchange between likeminded actors in climate policy networks

There is a strong consensus among scientists that climate change is mostly caused by human behavior but the causes of climate change and the appropriate means for reducing greenhouse gas emissions remain under considerable debate. Research has shown that network structures in information exchange that confirm actors’ pre-existing beliefs can lead to echo chambers, where like-minded actors exclusively share information with each other. This can cause problems in decision making by contributing to the spread of misinformation, and by promoting extremist beliefs and distrust between actors holding different beliefs. Belief similarity between connected actors can be the result of either belief homophily or policy learning. Belief homophily and echo chambers have been found to be more common among individuals who have strong political beliefs, but this has not been studied at the organizational level. In this paper, we study the role of belief similarity in information exchange networks among organizations involved in climate policy making in eleven countries around the world using exponential random graph models. The results confirm that biased information exchange is a challenge in most of these countries.