Climate Change in Twitter: The Prevalence of Media and Politics

Abstract

The 21th Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was identified as the most promising summit for a global agreement aiming to combat the effects of climate change and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. This article analyses online communications about climate change during the Conference. The subjects discussed in social networks are likely to affect public debates and provide important information regarding public opinion and perceptions on climate change (Williams et al., 2015). This paper focuses on the popular social network Twitter, which has been considered a barometer of public perception (Brown & Wake, 2015). Twitter has more than 310 million active users per month, of which 79% are outside the United States, allowing for analyses of different linguistic contexts, namely under-researched ones, such as Spanish and Portuguese. This study provides a first outlook at Twitter uses and content in those languages aiming to answer the following research questions: Which type of content is most popular in Twitter about climate change? What language (words and names) is used to discuss this issue? To what extent is the traditional media a relevant reference in climate change communication in this social media? Who are the actors that compose this social media and who are the most influential ones? This study concludes, among other things, that several politicians stand out among the most influential actors and that the media is an important source of information in this social network. In the Portuguese data, the study found a very high level of activity of citizens, who dominated the production of content on COP 21.