How the experience of California wildfires shape Twitter climate change framings

Jessie W. Y. Ko (), Shengquan Ni, Alexander Taylor, Xiusi Chen, Yicong Huang, Avinash Kumar, Sadeem Alsudais, Zuozhi Wang, Xiaozhen Liu, Wei Wang, Chen Li and Suellen Hopfer
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Jessie W. Y. Ko: University of California
Shengquan Ni: University of California
Alexander Taylor: University of California
Xiusi Chen: University of California
Yicong Huang: University of California
Avinash Kumar: University of California
Sadeem Alsudais: University of California
Zuozhi Wang: University of California
Xiaozhen Liu: University of California
Wei Wang: University of California
Chen Li: University of California
Suellen Hopfer: University of California

Climatic Change, 2024, vol. 177, issue 1, No 17, 21 pages

Abstract: Abstract Climate communication scientists search for effective message strategies to engage the ambivalent public in support of climate advocacy. The personal experience of wildfire is expected to render climate change impacts more concretely, pointing to a potential message strategy to engage the public. This study examined Twitter discourse related to climate change during the onset of 20 wildfires in California between the years 2017 and 2021. In this mixed method study, we analyzed tweets geographically and temporally proximal to the occurrence of wildfires to discover framings and examined how frequencies in climate framings changed before and after fires. Results identified three predominant climate framings: linking wildfire to climate change, suggesting climate actions, and attributing climate change to adversities besides wildfires. Mean tweet frequencies linking wildfire to climate change and attributing adversities increased significantly after the onset of fire. While suggesting climate action tweets also increased, the increase was not statistically significant. Temporal analysis of tweet frequencies for the three themes of tweets showed that discussion increased after the onset of a fire but persisted typically no more than 2 weeks. For fires that burned for longer periods of more than a month, external events triggered climate discussions. Our findings contribute to identifying how the personal experience of wildfire shapes Twitter discussion related to climate change, and how these framings change over time during wildfire events, leading to insights into critical time points after wildfire for implementing message strategies to increase public engagement on climate change impacts and policy.

Keywords: Climate change; Climate change communication; Wildfire; Extreme weather events; Framing; Twitter; Engagement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s10584-023-03668-0

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