Characterising climate change discourse on social media during extreme weather events

Roxburgh, Nicholas; Guan, Dabo; Shin, Kong Joo; Rand, William; Managi, Shunsuke; Lovelace, Robin; Meng, Jing

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2018.11.004

Cited by 79 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Different frames concerning the global climate concern are popular among the public, politicians, environmentalists, and the media [1,28,29]. Big data analyses have indicated that when interpreting climate events, individuals' preference for frameworks was influenced by demographics [5] and social-political background [2]. Different choices of frameworks can evoke different psychological processes [30], promote or inhibit engagement intentions [31], or gain approval on various levels [32].…”

Section: Climate Change Global Warming and Framesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The public's distinct understanding of the cause and effect of the global climate issue is an obstacle to joint mitigation actions. In addition to a diversity of views co-existing in the public discourse [1,2], previous studies noticed that the public had even failed to reach an agreement on whether "climate change" or "global warming" is the most appropriate definition of the global climate concern [3][4][5]. According to the definition provided by [6], global warming describes global climate issues as a continuous increase in the average temperature of Earth's surface due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, whereas climate change includes not only temperature rise but also a range of complex changes in the state of the climate [7], which may be caused by natural process, external forces, or human interventions [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

#Climatechange vs. #Globalwarming: Characterizing Two Competing Climate Discourses on Twitter with Semantic Network and Temporal Analyses

Shi

Pei-nan

et al. 2020

IJERPH

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Distinct perceptions of the global climate is one of the factors preventing society from achieving consensus or taking collaborative actions on this issue. The public has not even reached an agreement on the naming of the global concern, showing preference for either “climate change” or “global warming”, and few previous studies have addressed these two competing discourses resulting from distinct climate concerns by differently linking numerous climate concepts. Based on the 6,662,478 tweets containing #climatechange or #globalwarming generated between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2018, we constructed the semantic networks of the two discourses and examined their evolution over the decade. The findings indicate that climate change demonstrated a more scientific perspective and showed an attempt to condense climate discussions rather than diffuse the topic by frequently addressing sub-topics simultaneously. Global warming triggered more political responses and showed a greater connection with phenomena. Temporal analysis suggests that traditional political discussions were gradually fading in both discourses but more recently started to revive in the form of discourse alliance in the climate change discourse. The associations between global warming and weather abnormalitiessuddenly strengthened around 2012. Climate change is becoming more dominant than global warming in public discussions. Although two discourses have shown more similarities in the rank order of important climate concepts, apparent disagreements continue about how these concepts are associated. These findings lay the groundwork for researchers and communicators to narrow the discrepancy between diverse climate perceptions.

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Section: Climate Change Global Warming and Framesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

#Climatechange vs. #Globalwarming: Characterizing Two Competing Climate Discourses on Twitter with Semantic Network and Temporal Analyses

Shi

Pei-nan

et al. 2020

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One such topic is Climate Impacts in the Pacific as compared to the Southeast. These regions have recently experienced a disproportionate number of natural disasters [ 32 , 33 ] which has been previously shown to influence climate change beliefs of a region [ 4 , 5 ]. Similarly, Environmental Justice emerges as an important topic in the Rockies, Southeast, Southwest, and Northeast.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is complicated by geographic variations in climate change belief in the United States, where county-level belief in climate change ranges from 43-80% of the population [ 1 ]. These variations have been attributed to endogenous factors such as regional heterogeneity in racial and ethnic composition [ 1 ], media consumption [ 2 ], and the beliefs of an immediate social circle [ 3 ]—as well as exogenous factors such as the frequency of exposure to natural disasters [ 4 , 5 ] and geographic proximity to the coast [ 6 ]. Understanding causes of variation in climate change opinions requires a holistic analysis of the topics, themes, and events associated with climate change beliefs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping climate discourse to climate opinion: An approach for augmenting surveys with social media to enhance understandings of climate opinion in the United States

et al. 2021

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Surveys are commonly used to quantify public opinions of climate change and to inform sustainability policies. However, conducting large-scale population-based surveys is often a difficult task due to time and resource constraints. This paper outlines a machine learning framework—grounded in statistical learning theory and natural language processing—to augment climate change opinion surveys with social media data. The proposed framework maps social media discourse to climate opinion surveys, allowing for discerning the regionally distinct topics and themes that contribute to climate opinions. The analysis reveals significant regional variation in the emergent social media topics associated with climate opinions. Furthermore, significant correlation is identified between social media discourse and climate attitude. However, the dependencies between topic discussion and climate opinion are not always intuitive and often require augmenting the analysis with a topic’s most frequent n-grams and most representative tweets to effectively interpret the relationship. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of how these results can be used in the policy framing process to quickly and effectively understand constituents’ opinions on critical issues.

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“…"Listening in" on conversations is to some extent made possible by examining social media activity. Social media channels have become increasingly influential in exchanging information, mediating discussions on topical issues, and giving users the opportunity to create their own stories or share opinions (Roxburgh et al, 2019). The open exchange of contrasting perspectives provides rich material to study the communication of contested topics within or across groups (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate crisis and flying: social media analysis traces the rise of “flightshame”

Becken

Friedl

Stantić

et al. 2020

Journal of Sustainable Tourism

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Even before the global halt to extensive mobility due to the coronavirus crisis, there has been growing resistance amongst some groups to flying. Reflecting increasing concern about the imminent climate emergency, the phenomenon of feeling ashamed of flying and expressing related emotions through communication has resulted in the neologism "flygskam". Drawing on 14,212 Twitter posts that contained "flygskam" and a further 1037 using the English "flightshame", this research examined the spatial-temporal spread of these words from Sweden starting in 2016 to the rest of the world indicating a global phenomenon. The findings indicate that national context continues to be important in understanding the nexus of individual and social sensemaking and processing of new information. They also demonstrate, however, that global networks (facilitated through social media) might challenge the needs of physical mobility as requirements to connect, exchange views, and create identity through peer group membership. Further analysis of the content revealed key perspectives and topics, providing insight into the relatively homogeneous discussions amongst a network community. Only 6% of posts rejected the notion, whilst the majority indicated support and advanced suggestions for more sustainable alternatives. It might be too early to say whether language behaviour expressed in online communication translates into real behaviour, but the current pandemic may well provide further impetus to no-fly movements by way of a strategic alliance between different peer groups.

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Characterising climate change discourse on social media during extreme weather events

Abstract: This is a repository copy of Characterising climate change discourse on social media during extreme weather events.

Cited by 79 publications

References 39 publications

#Climatechange vs. #Globalwarming: Characterizing Two Competing Climate Discourses on Twitter with Semantic Network and Temporal Analyses

#Climatechange vs. #Globalwarming: Characterizing Two Competing Climate Discourses on Twitter with Semantic Network and Temporal Analyses

Mapping climate discourse to climate opinion: An approach for augmenting surveys with social media to enhance understandings of climate opinion in the United States

Climate crisis and flying: social media analysis traces the rise of “flightshame”

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