Do I have time to build the ark calmly? Characterizing attitudes towards climate change via sentiment analysis of social media

ABSTRACT

Public discourse about climate change is characterized by a wide variety of frames. Understanding how people integrate climate change narratives into their lives is essential for designing socially accepted climate policies. Our study focuses on people’s positions and reactions concerning the effects of sea level rise on the Catalan coast (Spain) and references tweets related to a 2021 publication by Climate Central, Picturing Our Future, on sea level rise. The novelty of the approach is the focus on a gradual form of climate change, such as sea level rise, in contrast with extreme events, such as storms or heat waves. We collected and analysed the content of 287 tweets that reacted to the Climate Central’s publication mentioned above, classifying them in terms of the sentiment they expressed. The results show three main types of reactions: realist, joking, and denier. Our conclusions underscores the significance of attending to how climate change narratives are portrayed and communicated through social media, and how societal beliefs and perspectives shape these narratives and dispositions. These aspects, crucial for fostering awareness and concern about pressing environmental issues, accentuate the necessity of integrating them into climate policy design.

KEYWORDS:

• Sea level rise
• social perception
• social media
• people’s beliefs
• narratives on climate change
• public understanding of science

Acknowledgments

This publication is part of the R&D&i project “Adaptación a los riesgos asociados al cambio climático en espacios turísticos del litoral mediterráneo: percepción, incentivos y barreras” (reference PID2019-104480GB-I00) funded by MCIN (10.13039/501100011033). The authors would like also to thank David Alegre Lorenz for his assistance and effort for the tweets’ classification process.

Authors contributions

JP designed the study, JP and EG collected and analysed the data, JP and EG wrote and reviewed the manuscript, JP and EG prepared the figures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data used in this study is available in a Zenodo repository at https://zenodo.org/record/6559169

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the R&D&i project ”Adaptación a los riesgos asociados al cambio climático en espacios turísticos del litoral mediterráneo: percepción, incentivos y barreras” (reference PID2019-104480GB-I00) funded by MCIN (10.13039/501100011033).