Characterising climate change discourse on social media during extreme weather events
Characterising climate change discourse on social media during extreme weather events
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DOI：
10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2018.11.004
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发表时间：
2019-01-01
影响因子：
8.9
通讯作者：
Meng, Jing
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Roxburgh, Nicholas;Guan, Dabo;Meng, Jing
当极端天气事件发生时，人们经常转向社交媒体平台分享信息、观点和经验。经常讨论的话题之一是气候变化在影响某一事件方面可能发挥或没有发挥的作用。在这里，我们检查了在三个高强度极端天气事件（飓风艾琳、飓风桑迪和暴风雪乔纳斯）背景下提到气候变化的 Twitter 帖子，以评估不同事件的主题框架和关注度如何变化。我们还研究了背景因素在塑造平台上气候变化报道方面可以发挥的作用。我们发现，对气候变化否认的批评在艾琳时期占主导地位，而政治和意识形态斗争框架在桑迪时期占主导地位。相比之下，乔纳斯期间的讨论更多地分为关于气候变化与事件之间的科学联系的帖子和总体上对气候科学提出质疑的帖子。桑迪期间对政治和意识形态斗争框架的关注反映了该事件发生时正值占领运动活跃且2012年美国总统选举临近。我们认为，这些因素也可能导致气候变化在桑迪期间成为比艾琳或乔纳斯期间更突出的讨论点。与此同时，乔纳斯的框架暗示，与热带风暴相比，公众对气候变化如何影响寒冷天气事件的了解较少。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，事件特征和短期社会政治背景如何在确定看待气候变化的视角方面发挥关键作用。
When extreme weather events occur, people often turn to social media platforms to share information, opinions and experiences. One of the topics commonly discussed is the role climate change may or may not have played in influencing an event. Here, we examine Twitter posts that mentioned climate change in the context of three high-magnitude extreme weather events - Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Sandy and Snowstorm Jonas - in order to assess how the framing of the topic and the attention paid to it can vary between events. We also examine the role that contextual factors can play in shaping climate change coverage on the platform. We find that criticism of climate change denial dominated during Irene, while political and ideological struggle frames dominated during Sandy. Discourse during Jonas was, in contrast, more divided between posts about the scientific links between climate change and the events, and posts contesting climate science in general. The focus on political and ideological struggle frames during Sandy reflects the event's occurrence at a time when the Occupy movement was active and the 2012 US Presidential Election was nearing. These factors, we suggest, could also contribute to climate change being a more prominent discussion point during Sandy than during Irene or Jonas. The Jonas frames, meanwhile, hint at lesser public understanding of how climate change may influence cold weather events when compared with tropical storms. Overall, our findings demonstrate how event characteristics and short-term socio-political context can play a critical role in determining the lenses through which climate change is viewed.