Exploring climate change on Twitter using seven aspects: Stance, sentiment, aggressiveness, temperature, gender, topics, and disasters

How do climate change deniers differ from believers? Is there any correlation between human sentiment and deviations from historic temperature? We answer nine such questions using 13 years of Twitter data and 15 million tweets. Seven aspects are explored, namely, user gender, climate change stance and sentiment, aggressiveness, deviations from historic temperature, topics discussed, and environmental disaster events. We found that: a) climate change deniers use the term global warming much often than believers and use aggressive language, while believers tweet more about taking actions to fight the phenomenon, b) deniers are more present in the American Region, South Africa, Japan, and Eastern China and less present in Europe, India, and Central Africa, c) people connect much more the warm temperatures with man-made climate change than cold temperatures, d) the same regions that had more climate change deniers also tweet with negative sentiment, e) a positive correlation is observed between human sentiment and deviations from historic temperature; when the deviation is between -1.143 degrees C and +2.401 degrees C, people tweet the most positive, f) there exist 90% correlation between sentiment and stance, and -94% correlation between sentiment and aggressiveness, g) no clear patterns are observed to correlate sentiment and stance with disaster events based on total deaths, number of affected, and damage costs, h) topics discussed on Twitter indicate that climate change is a politicized issue and people are expressing their concerns especially when witnessing extreme weather; the global stance could be considered optimistic, as there are many discussions that point out the importance of human intervention to fight climate change and actions are being taken through events to raise the awareness of this phenomenon.

Automated summary

This study analyzes 13 years of Twitter data and 15 million tweets to explore differences between climate change deniers and believers. It finds that deniers use the term "global warming" more often and employ aggressive language, while believers focus more on taking action against climate change. Deniers are more prevalent in certain regions, and people tend to connect warm temperatures with man-made climate change. The study also reveals a positive correlation between human sentiment and deviations from historic temperature, indicating that people are most positive when the temperature deviation is within a certain range. Additionally, sentiment is correlated with stance and inversely correlated with aggressiveness. The study concludes that climate change is a politicized issue on Twitter, with discussions emphasizing the importance of human intervention and events raising awareness of the phenomenon.