IPCC report gets Australians tweeting

Researchers from The University of Nottingham have analysed how people on Twitter responded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest report, which was published last September.

Writing in the journal PLOS One, the researchers said, “Using statistical methods, tweets were analysed to discover the hashtags used when people tweeted about the IPCC report, and how Twitter users formed communities around their conversational connections.

“The most used hashtags related to themes of science, geographical location and social issues connected to climate change.”

Each node represents a Twitter user. Size of nodes is correlated with that user’s number of conversational connections. Climate change unsupportives, purple; supportive, red; neutral, green; did not tweet, light blue.

The researchers found that Australia was a particular hotbed of Twitter activity relating to the IPCC report. Co-author Dr Warren Pearce attributes this to the exposure climate change has received in Australia due to the introduction of the carbon tax and the report’s reference to the threat of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef.

“The introduction of the carbon tax made climate change an electrical issue in Australia,” Dr Pearce said. “Questions about climate change and the tax were asked in the TV leaders’ debate and the general election took place just before the data collection period.”

The analysis also found tweeters largely discussed the report with people who broadly shared their own views. Dr Pearce believes this is partly due to the restrictions of the channel limiting tweets to 140 characters; however, the researchers said they did discover “the emergence of a community of Twitter users, predominantly based in the UK, where greater interaction between contrasting views took place”.

Dr Warren Pearce and Professor Brigitte Nerlich carried out the research as part of Making Science Public - a five-year research program looking at the challenges and opportunities arising from more public debate of science - in collaboration with Drs Iina Hellsten and Kim Holmberg from VU University Amsterdam