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

Abstract

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.

Climate anxiety, pro-environmental action and wellbeing: antecedents and outcomes of negative emotional responses to climate change in 28 countries

“…In a pluralistic media landscape (Busch & Judick, 2021;W. Shi et al, 2020;Thaker & Leiserowitz, 2014), it is unsurprising that negative climate-related emotions were more closely linked to the amount of attention people direct at climate change-related media, as well as the content of the information people consume.…”

Cross-National Study on the Perception of the Korean Wave and Cultural Hybridity in Indonesia and Malaysia Using Discourse on Social Media

“…Large amounts of user-generated data on social media reflect public opinion, thus offering accurate insights into the public mind [73]. Previous research has included the use of these opinions to discover topics in various contexts, such as global warming concerns [74], rumors surrounding public events [73], mental disorder experiences [75], and comments on gender issues [76]. Because social media users tend to share freely their opinions about their product experiences in the media [77], the user-generated opinions on these media would also be useful for examining the diverse and genuine responses on Korean cultural products.…”

Cross-National Study on the Perception of the Korean Wave and Cultural Hybridity in Indonesia and Malaysia Using Discourse on Social Media

“…Large amounts of user-generated data on social media reflect public opinion, thus offering accurate insights into the public mind [73]. Previous research has included the use of these opinions to discover topics in various contexts, such as global warming concerns [74], rumors surrounding public events [73], mental disorder experiences [75], and comments on gender www.videleaf.com issues [76]. Because social media users tend to share freely their opinions about their product experiences in the media [77], the user-generated opinions on these media would also be useful for examining the diverse and genuine responses on Korean cultural products.…”