Network analysis reveals open forums and echo chambers in social media discussions of climate change
University of Exeter · Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems · +2 more institutions
Abstract
Action to tackle the complex and divisive issue of climate change will be strongly influenced by public perception. Online social media and associated social networks are an increasingly important forum for public debate and are known to influence individual attitudes and behaviours – yet online discussions and social networks related to climate change are not well understood. Here we construct several forms of social network for users communicating about climate change on the popular microblogging platform Twitter. We classify user attitudes to climate change based on message content and find that social networks are characterised by strong attitude-based homophily and segregation into polarised “sceptic” and…
Citation impact
- FWCI
- 65.88
- Percentile
- 100%
- References
- 84
Authors
4Topics & keywords
- Social media
- Homophily
- Skepticism
- Perception
- Microblogging
- Sentiment analysis
- Construct (python library)
- Negativity effect
- Climate action