The environmental agenda under dispute: misinformation and discursive desistance in the Vatican

Abstract

The present work is justified in the context of digital polarization and ecological crisis, wherein the encyclical Laudato Si’ by Pope Francis, a moral call to secular action, was the subject of a discrediting campaign through a series of strategies characteristic of post-truth and infodemic by groups opposed to the ecological agenda of Pope Francis presented in the document. The main objective of the study
presented herein is to analyze the discursive strategies employed by conservative political, media, and religious actors, principally American, to discredit said agenda. Methodologically, Critical Discourse Analysis and Relevance Theory are employed on a sample of statements from media outlets such as Fox News, The Federalist, the Heartland Institute, among other actors and media. The results identify three strategies: the delegitimization of papal authority in science and economics; the negative ideological association
with Marxism and globalist agendas; and the disassociation from Catholic orthodoxy through
the articulation of macro-themes reinforced by diverse lexical, argumentative, and syntactic resources, as well as the presence of ostensive and inferential resources linked to these strategies. The encyclical, which represents an ethical-religious call for ecological responsibility, was processed by its opponents not as a proposal to be debated but as an identity threat to be neutralized.