Making Climate Social: Tweets Related to "Climate Change: The Facts", 2019

Social media is a transformative digital technology, collapsing the "six degrees of separation" which have previously characterised many social networks, and breaking down many of the barriers to individuals communicating with each other. Some commentators suggest that this is having profound effects across society, that social media has revolutionised the communication of controversial public issues such as climate change, and that this has significantly increased the volume and variety of scientists, politicians, journalists, non-governmental organisations, think tanks and members of the public in contact with each other.
Tweets were collected in response to the airing of the BBC programme "Climate Change: The Facts", broadcast on April 18th, 2019. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10095266/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00049b1/climate-change-the-facts The data deposited is a list of 87,177 tweet IDs, which can be used to retrieve tweets.<p>Social media is a transformative digital technology, collapsing the "six degrees of separation" which have previously characterised many social networks, and breaking down many of the barriers to individuals communicating with each other. Some commentators suggest that this is having profound effects across society, that social media has revolutionised the communication of controversial public issues such as climate change, and that this has significantly increased the volume and variety of scientists, politicians, journalists, non-governmental organisations, think tanks and members of the public in contact with each other. For example, in 2012 over 4000 tweets about climate change were sent every day.

Social media communication can act as a trusted source of public information about climate change, foster public participation in climate science, be a campaigning tool and trigger polarising events with far-reaching effects (e.g. Climategate). However, despite these broad changes in the communication environment, we lack a detailed understanding of the characteristics of social media climate change communications, the wider contexts for these communications, and what the social media revolution means for the relationship between science, politics and publics. Using an innovative interdisciplinary methodological approach that combines social media big data analysis with fine grained ethnographic description, this project aims to: 1) discover the key contributors to social media climate change communication, the content they discuss, and how these change over time and space; 2) locate the connections between contributors, explore how social media usage is influenced by personal, professional and intellectual backgrounds, and how these influences vary over time and space; 3) identify the opportunities and challenges presented by social media for future public discussions of climate change. In this way, Making Climate Social will establish the contributors, content, connections and contexts which make up social media climate change communications, how these change over time and space, and what they mean for future public discussions of the science and politics of climate change.

The Met Office is a project partner, hosting a knowledge exchange visit by the PI, where he will interact with key climate scientists, the Communications Team and Customer Centre and give a seminar to research staff in both climate and weather research. The PI will also meet regularly with the Met Office, Department for Energy and Climate Change and the cross-sector project Advisory Board to ensure that research findings reach and affect relevant audiences: i) academic audiences in science and technology studies, climate change communication and social media researchers; ii) publics interested in climate change and/or social media usage; iii) government, scientific organisations and universities with responsibility for supporting social media usage by climate change researchers. The project will achieve this through: i) high-quality research articles published in leading journals across a range of specialist academic journals; ii) a dedicated project blog, Twitter account @MakCliSoc, and series of Guardian blogposts to build awareness with, and disseminate findings to, a broad range of stakeholders and publics; iii) the Climate Change Social Radar: an innovative and interactive collaboration with digital developers to provide an engaging web interface through which to explore project data and reflect on broader ethical issues of social media; iv) succinct policy briefings tailored for key stakeholders and written in plain English.

The long term goal of this project is to make Making Climate Social a trusted source of information that tracks the dynamics of social media climate change communications, providing a counterpart to the Media and Climate Change Observatory (Colorado) which focuses on traditional media coverage of climate change.</p>

社交媒体是一项具有变革性的数字技术，打破了此前诸多社交网络所遵循的‘六度分隔（Six Degrees of Separation）’定律，大幅消解了个体间沟通的诸多壁垒。有评论者认为，这一变革对全社会产生了深远影响：社交媒体彻底革新了气候变化等争议性公共议题的传播范式，极大提升了科学家、政客、记者、非政府组织、智库成员与普通公众之间的互动规模与多样性。

本数据集采集自2019年4月18日播出的BBC纪录片《Climate Change: The Facts》，其IMDb链接为https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10095266/，BBC iPlayer播放链接为https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00049b1/climate-change-the-facts。所收录的数据为87177条推文ID，可用于检索对应推文内容。

例如，2012年期间，每日平均有超过4000条与气候变化相关的推文被发布。社交媒体上的气候相关传播，既可作为公众获取气候变化信息的可信来源，助力公众参与气候科学研究，亦可成为行动倡导工具，甚至引发具有深远影响的极化事件（如‘气候门（Climategate）’）。然而，尽管传播环境发生了上述诸多广泛变革，我们仍缺乏对社交媒体气候传播特征、此类传播的更广泛语境，以及这场社交媒体变革对科学、政治与公众之间关系的具体影响的深入认知。

本项目‘Making Climate Social’采用创新性的跨学科方法论，将社交媒体大数据分析与精细化的民族志描述相结合，旨在达成三大研究目标：1）厘清社交媒体气候传播的核心参与主体、其所讨论的议题内容，以及这些要素随时间与空间维度的演变规律；2）梳理参与主体间的关联网络，探究社交媒体使用行为如何受到个体、职业与学术背景的影响，并分析这些影响随时间与空间的变化情况；3）识别社交媒体为未来气候变化公共讨论带来的机遇与挑战。通过上述研究路径，本项目将系统构建社交媒体气候传播的参与主体、内容、关联网络与语境框架，揭示其随时间与空间的演变规律，并阐明其对未来气候变化科学与政治公共讨论的意义。

英国气象局（Met Office）为本项目合作方，将为首席研究员（Principal Investigator，PI）提供知识交流访问机会，期间首席研究员将与核心气候科学家、传播团队及客户中心开展交流，并为气候与气象研究领域的科研人员开展专题讲座。此外，首席研究员还将定期与英国气象局、能源与气候变化部以及跨部门项目咨询委员会会面，以确保研究成果能够触达并影响三类受众：i）科技研究、气候变化传播与社交媒体研究领域的学术受众；ii）关注气候变化与/或社交媒体使用的公众；iii）承担支持气候变化研究者使用社交媒体职责的政府、科研机构与高校。

本项目将通过以下途径实现成果传播：i）在多个细分领域的顶尖学术期刊发表高质量研究论文；ii）搭建专属项目博客、Twitter账号@MakCliSoc，并发布系列《卫报（Guardian）》博客文章，以提升广泛利益相关方与公众的关注度并传播研究成果；iii）推出“气候变化社会雷达（Climate Change Social Radar）”：与数字开发者开展创新性互动合作，打造兼具吸引力的网页界面，以供用户探索项目数据并反思社交媒体相关的伦理议题；iv）为核心利益相关方撰写简洁易懂的政策简报，采用平实语言进行表述。

本项目的长期目标是将‘Making Climate Social’打造为可信的信息来源，用于追踪社交媒体气候变化传播的动态变化，以此作为与科罗拉多大学的媒体与气候变化观测站（Media and Climate Change Observatory，Colorado）相对应的补充平台——后者专注于传统媒体对气候变化的报道。