Network analysis reveals open forums and echo chambers in social media discussions of climate change
Open accessAbstract
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 “activist” groups. Most users interact only with like-minded others, in communities dominated by a single view. However, we also find mixed-attitude communities in which sceptics and activists frequently interact. Messages between like-minded users typically carry positive sentiment, while messages between sceptics and activists carry negative sentiment. We identify a number of general patterns in user behaviours relating to engagement with alternative views. Users who express negative sentiment are themselves the target of negativity. Users in mixed-attitude communities are less likely to hold a strongly polarised view, but more likely to express negative sentiment towards other users with differing views. Overall, social media discussions of climate change often occur within polarising “echo chambers”, but also within “open forums”, mixed-attitude communities that reduce polarisation and stimulate debate. Our results have implications for public engagement with this important global challenge.
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Social media have recently been described as intensifying the echo-chamber effects that media often have anyway.
“Social media have recently been described as intensifying the echochamber effects that media often have anyway, e.g. [46, 47, 48].”
From AI for the Common Good?! Pitfalls, challenges, and ethics pen-testing (2019) · cites this paper as [48]
The Discussion (page unavailable) reports that most Twitter users discussing climate change interacted with like-minded users, forming self-reinforcing echo chambers. It does not establish that social media intensify echo-chamber effects relative to other media; it also identifies mixed-attitude “open forums.” (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredIn rare instances of intergroup communication in online climate change discussions, more negative frames tended to prevail, including dismissal of climate change information as hoaxes, derailment of conversations to heated issues of identity, and overall higher levels of sarcasm and incivility.
“Qualitative analysis further showed that in rare instances of intergroup communication, more negative frames tended to prevail, featuring dismissal of climate change information as hoaxes, derailment of conversations to heated issues of identity, as well as overall higher levels of sarcasm and incivility [8], [17], [18].”
From Affective Polarization in Online Climate Change Discourse on Twitter (2020) · cites this paper as [8]
The Discussion says exposure to alternative views was relatively rare, and the Results report more negative sentiment in cross-group interactions. The paper does not substantiate the claimed qualitative findings about hoaxes, identity-related derailment, sarcasm, or incivility. (LLM, conf=0.87)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredExisting scholarship on climate change discourse has relied on manually annotated corpora and datasets of limited size, facing barriers to measuring the emotional component of climate change discussions in a generalizable fashion.
“Relying consistently on manually annotated corpora and datasets of limited size, existing scholarship has faced barriers to measuring the emotional component of climate change discussions in a generalizable fashion [8], [17], [18].”
From Affective Polarization in Online Climate Change Discourse on Twitter (2020) · cites this paper as [8]
The Discussion (page unavailable) says that locating a representative corpus of social-media discourse challenges established textual-analysis methods. Section 3.2 (page unavailable) describes the authors’ own manual sentiment classification of a subset of tweets. Neither passage establishes that existing scholarship consistently relied on manually annotated, limited-size datasets or that this specifically prevented generalizable measurement of emotion. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredEcho chambers have been observed for climate change discussions on social media.
“Previously echo chambers have been observed for climate change discussions on social media (Williams et al., 2015;McCright and Dunlap, 2010).”
From Credibility of climate change denial in social media (2019) · cites this paper as Williams et al., 2015
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- Authors
- Williams, H. T. P., McMurray, J. R., Kurz, T., & Hugo Lambert, F.
- Affiliations
- University of Exeter (GB)
- Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Williams, Hywel T.P.
- Venue
- Global Environmental Change
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-05
- Volume
- 32
- Pages
- 126-138
- ISSN
- 0959-3780 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2057850395
- Cited by
- 631
- References
- 13
- Citations by year
- 2026: 41 · 2025: 107 · 2024: 83 · 2023: 93 · 2022: 75 · 2021: 66 · 2020: 52 · 2019: 55 · 2018: 26 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 3
- FWCI
- 65.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Global Environmental Change (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Figshare (submittedVersion)
- Open Research Exeter (University of Exeter) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- UK EPSRC's Bridging the Gaps (EP/I001433/1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change Communication and Perception
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
- Keywords
- climate change, social media, Twitter, echo chambers, open forum, attitude homophily, polarization, climate change skepticism, climate activism, sentiment, public perception, online debate
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