Affective polarization and political sorting drive public antagonism around climate change and other issues at the science-policy nexus. We study cross-domain spillover of incivility in public engagements with climate change and public health on Twitter and Reddit using the COVID-19 period as a case study. We find strong evidence of the signatures of affective polarization surrounding COVID-19 spilling into the climate change domain. Across different social media systems, COVID-19 content is associated with incivility in climate discussions. These patterns of increased antagonism were responsive to pandemic events that made the link between science and public policy more salient. The observed spillover activated along pre-pandemic political cleavages, specifically anti-internationalist populist beliefs, that linked climate policy opposition to vaccine hesitancy. Our findings show how affective polarization in public engagement with science becomes entrenched across policy domains, which has implications for how the public engages with and communicates about issues such as climate change and public health.

翻译：情感极化与政治归类加剧了公众在气候变化及科学与政策交叉领域其他议题上的对立。我们以新冠疫情期间为案例，研究了推特与红迪平台公众参与气候变化及公共卫生讨论中不文明现象的跨领域溢出效应。研究发现显著证据表明，围绕新冠疫情的情感极化特征已蔓延至气候变化领域。在不同社交媒体系统中，新冠疫情相关内容与气候讨论中的不文明现象具有关联性。这种对抗性加剧的模式与流行病事件密切相关——这些事件强化了科学与公共政策之间的显性关联。观察到的溢出效应沿疫情前已存在的政治分化轴线激活，特别是反国际主义的民粹主义信念，这种信念将气候政策反对与疫苗犹豫联系起来。研究结果表明，科学参与中的情感极化如何在政策领域间固化，这对公众如何参与及讨论气候变化、公共卫生等议题具有重要启示。