Making Climate Social: Contributors, Content, Connections and Contexts in Social Media Climate Change Communication

社交媒体是一种变革性的数字技术，它打破了以前许多社交网络的特征——“六度隔离”，打破了人与人之间交流的许多障碍。一些评论家认为，这对整个社会都产生了深远的影响，社交媒体彻底改变了气候变化等有争议的公共问题的传播方式，这大大增加了科学家、政治家、记者、非政府组织、智库和公众成员相互接触的数量和种类。例如，在2012年，每天有超过4000条关于气候变化的推文被发送。社交媒体传播可以作为气候变化公共信息的可靠来源，促进公众对气候科学的参与，成为一种竞选工具，并引发具有深远影响的两极分化事件（例如气候门）。然而，尽管传播环境发生了这些广泛的变化，但我们对社交媒体气候变化传播的特征、这些传播的更广泛背景以及社交媒体革命对科学、政治和公众之间的关系意味着什么缺乏详细的了解。该项目采用创新的跨学科方法，将社交媒体大数据分析与细粒度人种志描述相结合，旨在：1)发现社交媒体气候变化传播的关键贡献者，他们讨论的内容，以及这些内容如何随时间和空间变化；2)定位贡献者之间的联系，探索社交媒体的使用如何受到个人、专业和智力背景的影响，以及这些影响如何随时间和空间变化；3)识别社会媒体为未来公众讨论气候变化带来的机遇和挑战。通过这种方式，《使气候社会化》将确定构成社会媒体气候变化传播的贡献者、内容、联系和背景，这些因素如何随时间和空间变化，以及它们对未来气候变化科学和政治的公共讨论意味着什么。英国气象局是项目的合作伙伴，主办了PI的知识交流访问，在那里他将与主要的气候科学家、通信团队和客户中心进行互动，并为气候和天气研究的研究人员举办研讨会。PI还将定期与气象局，能源和气候变化部以及跨部门项目咨询委员会会面，以确保研究成果能够到达并影响相关受众：i)科学技术研究的学术受众，气候变化传播和社交媒体研究人员；Ii)对气候变化和/或社交媒体使用感兴趣的公众；Iii)政府、科学组织和大学有责任支持气候变化研究人员使用社交媒体。该项目将通过以下方式实现：i)在一系列专业学术期刊的主要期刊上发表高质量的研究论文；ii)一个专门的项目博客，Twitter账号@MakCliSoc，以及一系列卫报博客文章，以建立意识，并向广泛的利益相关者和公众传播调查结果；iii)气候变化社会雷达：与数字开发人员进行创新和互动合作，提供一个引人入胜的网络界面，通过该界面探索项目数据并反思社交媒体的更广泛的道德问题；iv)为主要利益相关者量身定制的简洁的政策简报，并以简单的英语撰写。该项目的长期目标是使Making Climate Social成为一个可信赖的信息来源，跟踪社会媒体气候变化传播的动态，提供一个与媒体和气候变化观测站（科罗拉多州）相对应的平台，后者专注于传统媒体对气候变化的报道。

Social media is a transformative digital technology, collapsing the "six degrees of separation" which have previously characterised many social networks, and breaking down many of the barriers to individuals communicating with each other. Some commentators suggest that this is having profound effects across society, that social media has revolutionised the communication of controversial public issues such as climate change, and that this has significantly increased the volume and variety of scientists, politicians, journalists, non-governmental organisations, think tanks and members of the public in contact with each other. For example, in 2012 over 4000 tweets about climate change were sent every day. Social media communication can act as a trusted source of public information about climate change, foster public participation in climate science, be a campaigning tool and trigger polarising events with far-reaching effects (e.g. Climategate). However, despite these broad changes in the communication environment, we lack a detailed understanding of the characteristics of social media climate change communications, the wider contexts for these communications, and what the social media revolution means for the relationship between science, politics and publics. Using an innovative interdisciplinary methodological approach that combines social media big data analysis with fine grained ethnographic description, this project aims to: 1) discover the key contributors to social media climate change communication, the content they discuss, and how these change over time and space; 2) locate the connections between contributors, explore how social media usage is influenced by personal, professional and intellectual backgrounds, and how these influences vary over time and space; 3) identify the opportunities and challenges presented by social media for future public discussions of climate change. In this way, Making Climate Social will establish the contributors, content, connections and contexts which make up social media climate change communications, how these change over time and space, and what they mean for future public discussions of the science and politics of climate change. The Met Office is a project partner, hosting a knowledge exchange visit by the PI, where he will interact with key climate scientists, the Communications Team and Customer Centre and give a seminar to research staff in both climate and weather research. The PI will also meet regularly with the Met Office, Department for Energy and Climate Change and the cross-sector project Advisory Board to ensure that research findings reach and affect relevant audiences: i) academic audiences in science and technology studies, climate change communication and social media researchers; ii) publics interested in climate change and/or social media usage; iii) government, scientific organisations and universities with responsibility for supporting social media usage by climate change researchers. The project will achieve this through: i) high-quality research articles published in leading journals across a range of specialist academic journals; ii) a dedicated project blog, Twitter account @MakCliSoc, and series of Guardian blogposts to build awareness with, and disseminate findings to, a broad range of stakeholders and publics; iii) the Climate Change Social Radar: an innovative and interactive collaboration with digital developers to provide an engaging web interface through which to explore project data and reflect on broader ethical issues of social media; iv) succinct policy briefings tailored for key stakeholders and written in plain English.The long term goal of this project is to make Making Climate Social a trusted source of information that tracks the dynamics of social media climate change communications, providing a counterpart to the Media and Climate Change Observatory (Colorado) which focuses on traditional media coverage of climate change.