Authors
Stefan Daume, Victor Galaz, Petter Bjersér
Publication date
2023/5
Journal
Social Media+ Society
Volume
9
Issue
2
Pages
20563051231168370
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Description
Extreme weather-related events like wildfires have been increasing in frequency and severity due to climate change. Public online conversations that reflect on these events as climate emergencies can create awareness and build support for climate action but are also used to spread misinformation and climate change denial. To what extent automated social media accounts—“social bots”—amplify different perspectives of such events and influence climate change discourses, remains unknown, however. We use Twitter and the 2019/2020 Australia bushfires as a case study to explore this issue. Utilizing more than 1 million Tweets, we identify how climate change is framed in the context of those fires, and to what extent social bots affect specific climate change frames, including the spread of misinformation. Our results show that climate change represents a substantial part of online conversations about fires. The …
Total citations
2023202453