Assessing Energy Communities’ Awareness on Social Media with a Content and Sentiment Analysis

Myriam Caratù (), Valerio Brescia, Ilaria Pigliautile and Paolo Biancone
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Myriam Caratù: Faculty of Economics, Università degli Studi Internazionali di Roma, 00147 Roma, Italy
Valerio Brescia: Department of Management, University of Turin, 10134 Torino, Italy
Ilaria Pigliautile: Department of Engineering, University of Perugia, 06125 Perugia, Italy
Paolo Biancone: Department of Management, University of Turin, 10134 Torino, Italy

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 8, 1-28

Abstract: The development of energy communities has the potential to support the energy transition owing to the direct engagement of people who have the chance to become “prosumers” of energy. In properly explaining the benefits that this phenomenon can give to the population, a key set of channels is represented by social media, which can hit the target of citizens who have the budget to join the energy communities and can also “nurture” younger generations. In this view, the present work analyzes the performance of the topic “energy communities” on the main social media in order to understand people’s awareness of its benefits and to assess the societal awareness of this topic in terms of engagement and positive sentiment. The analysis conducted first concerned the definitions and conceptualization of energy communities of academics and practitioners, completed through a content analysis; we then focused on the fallout of these themes on social media and on its engagement (to understand if it was capable of generating a positive attitude). The social media analysis took place through a platform that uses artificial intelligence to analyze communication channels. The results show that there is still poor engagement with the energy community theme in social media, and a more structured communication strategy should be implemented with the collaboration between social media and practitioners/academics. Despite previous studies not analyzing how social media recall the topics of academics and practitioners related to energy communities, this is an important aspect to consider in order to conceive integrated marketing communication for promoting energy communities to citizens, as here demonstrated and proposed for the very first time.

Keywords: energy communities; social media; communication; sustainability; societal awareness; sentiment analysis; content analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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