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Climate Denial Fuels Climate Change Discussions More Than Local Climate-Related Disasters
Most scientists agree that climate change is the largest existential threat of our time. Despite the magnitude of the threat, surprisingly few climate-related discussions take place on social media. What factors drive online discussions about climate change? In this study, we examined the occurrence...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8426507/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34512442 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.682057 |
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author | Shah, Miti Seraj, Sarah Pennebaker, James W. |
author_facet | Shah, Miti Seraj, Sarah Pennebaker, James W. |
author_sort | Shah, Miti |
collection | PubMed |
description | Most scientists agree that climate change is the largest existential threat of our time. Despite the magnitude of the threat, surprisingly few climate-related discussions take place on social media. What factors drive online discussions about climate change? In this study, we examined the occurrence of Reddit discussions around three types of climate-related events: natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, wildfires), political events (i.e., 2016 United States Presidential election), and policy events (i.e., United States’ withdrawal from Paris Climate Agreement, release of IPCC report). The objective was to understand how different types of events influence collective action as measured by discussions of climate change. Six large US cities were selected based on the occurrence of at least one locally-relevant natural disaster since 2014. Posts (N = 4.4 million) from subreddits of the selected cities were collected to obtain a six-month period before and after local natural disasters as well as climate-related political and policy events (which applied equally to all cities). Climate change discussions increased significantly for all three types of events, with the highest discussion during the 2016 elections. Further, discussions returned to baseline levels within 2 months following natural disasters and policy events but continued at elevated rates for up to 4 months following the 2016 elections. The findings suggest that collective discussions on climate change are driven more by political leaders’ controversial positions than life-threatening local natural disasters themselves. Implications for collective action are discussed. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8426507 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-84265072021-09-10 Climate Denial Fuels Climate Change Discussions More Than Local Climate-Related Disasters Shah, Miti Seraj, Sarah Pennebaker, James W. Front Psychol Psychology Most scientists agree that climate change is the largest existential threat of our time. Despite the magnitude of the threat, surprisingly few climate-related discussions take place on social media. What factors drive online discussions about climate change? In this study, we examined the occurrence of Reddit discussions around three types of climate-related events: natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, wildfires), political events (i.e., 2016 United States Presidential election), and policy events (i.e., United States’ withdrawal from Paris Climate Agreement, release of IPCC report). The objective was to understand how different types of events influence collective action as measured by discussions of climate change. Six large US cities were selected based on the occurrence of at least one locally-relevant natural disaster since 2014. Posts (N = 4.4 million) from subreddits of the selected cities were collected to obtain a six-month period before and after local natural disasters as well as climate-related political and policy events (which applied equally to all cities). Climate change discussions increased significantly for all three types of events, with the highest discussion during the 2016 elections. Further, discussions returned to baseline levels within 2 months following natural disasters and policy events but continued at elevated rates for up to 4 months following the 2016 elections. The findings suggest that collective discussions on climate change are driven more by political leaders’ controversial positions than life-threatening local natural disasters themselves. Implications for collective action are discussed. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-08-26 /pmc/articles/PMC8426507/ /pubmed/34512442 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.682057 Text en Copyright © 2021 Shah, Seraj and Pennebaker. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Shah, Miti Seraj, Sarah Pennebaker, James W. Climate Denial Fuels Climate Change Discussions More Than Local Climate-Related Disasters |
title | Climate Denial Fuels Climate Change Discussions More Than Local Climate-Related Disasters |
title_full | Climate Denial Fuels Climate Change Discussions More Than Local Climate-Related Disasters |
title_fullStr | Climate Denial Fuels Climate Change Discussions More Than Local Climate-Related Disasters |
title_full_unstemmed | Climate Denial Fuels Climate Change Discussions More Than Local Climate-Related Disasters |
title_short | Climate Denial Fuels Climate Change Discussions More Than Local Climate-Related Disasters |
title_sort | climate denial fuels climate change discussions more than local climate-related disasters |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8426507/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34512442 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.682057 |
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