Making Climate Social: Contributors, Content, Connections and Contexts in Social Media Climate Change Communication

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.

Making Climate Social seeks to make a positive impact on society through changing the social media climate change communication practices of organisations and individuals, increasing public understanding of climate change and social media, and enhancing the knowledge and skills of climate change communicators. Building awareness and understanding of particular social media practices and approaches across different groups of users will provide a foundation for improved dialogue and begin to address the issues of polarisation and antagonism. Key stakeholders groups include scientists and scientific organisations, policymakers, journalists, non-governmental organisations, universities and members of the public:

i) climate change scientists and scientific organisations (e.g. European Geophysical Union) who will benefit from a better understanding of how they might use social media to communicate their own work, gain feedback from networks of interested publics beyond their own professional sectors, and contribute to broader public debates; ii) government policymakers (e.g., DECC) who will benefit from a better understanding of how climate change is discussed by diverse publics (including experts), how to assess the quality of information in these discussions, and how they might communicate through, and be informed by, social media in the policymaking process; iii) science journalists (e.g. Webster, Carrington, Rose) who can gain an improved understanding of how expert communities discuss complex scientific issues through social media; iv) non-governmental organisations (e.g. Avaaz) who can learn how the content and contexts of social media communications feed into 'bottom-up' climate activism; v) universities who can learn how to support a greater number of academics wishing to meet an identified public demand for social media climate change communication (Hawkins et al., 2014); vi) broader publics interested in climate change and/or social media usage who will have access to the Climate Change Social Radar, a digital data visualisation project which will encourage playful exploration of social media data collected about climate change, and enable reflection on how publicly accessible social media data can be utilised for research. Public understanding of climate change debates will also be enhanced through a series of "ethnographic self-portraits" written by the PI for The Guardian, describing and analysing what key contributors say on social media and how their views are informed by their backgrounds.

To these ends, a co-production approach has been employed in preparing this research proposal, and will be continued throughout the project itself. Key research users from the Met Office and DECC have been consulted, and three climate change communication practitioners are included in the project Advisory Board, in order to ensure that relevant research questions are addressed. Advisory Board members will also act as project ambassadors, publicising Making Climate Social within their own sectors with the aim of maximising the uptake of research findings.

Social media communication can act as a trusted source of climate change information for publics, as well as a trigger and means for controversy and contestation, so research impacts are important in maintaining the quality of information and discussion available through social media. In this way, Making Science Public seeks to improve the culture of social media climate change communication. Succinct, tailored policy briefings will be provided to stakeholders, potentially covering areas such as the institutional support provided to social media communicators by universities, the role of scientific organisations in encouraging and supporting its members to communicate via social media, and the role which social media communication can play in government open policy making.