Tweeting Disaster: Observed
Climate Risk Amplification Before,
During, and After Hurricane Sandy
Peter Jacques, Gita Sukthankar, Claire Knox
University of Central Florida
Introduction
Pamela Matson, an author of a 2010 NRC
study, notes that – because of a gap between
science and public perception-- the most
important recommendation for climate
science is to improve “risk communication
to help people better understand climate
change and behavioral science to improve
understanding of individual, societal, and
institutional factors that shape decision
making”
This gap between science and public
perception of climate science is most
conspicuous in climate denial, or the outright
rejection of orthodox climate science on
warming trends, human attribution, and critical
impacts of climate change (see Jacques 2009,
McCright and Dunlap 2003).
With help from Clayton Besaw, research assistant
Political Ecology Lab at UCF
Methods




60
50
Gather data from social networking sites.
This study uses a total population of
Tweets, made through the site Twitter ®.
Data is gathered through the University of
Illinois service, the Carbon Capture Report
(http://www.carboncapturereport.org/)
40
20
10
0
Hoax
Data from every tweet containing “global
warming” or “climate” is included; we
selected a month-long period around the
super-storm, Hurricane Sandy to measure
risk amplification before, during and after
the storm had passed.
Hype
Fraud
Lies
Scam
Liberal
Climate Denial and Sandy
140
120
100
Tweets were organized into a searchable
datasheet and then analyzed for content.
80
Literature Cited
60
•
40
•
20
Other elements of this work will include
machine, crowd and expert analysis of a
very large amounts of data.
0
Climate Denial
Unclear
No Sandy
Purpose
•
Against Denial
Sandy
•
“Hoax”
Our research is designed to better understand
climate risk communication through direct
observation. Many studies about climate risk
perception rely on attitudinal polls, our study is meant
to advance this literature by moving beyond what
respondants say in a poll to what they say in their
social network. Our goal is to better understand
climate risk perception, but to also have a
transformative effect on social science itself. The
team is working to use social network data mining to
be able to answer any relevant question related to
semantic behavior and social networks, from disease
outbreak, humanitarian crises, elections, and other
areas.
Our work will utilize Risk Amplification Theory to
interpret risk commmunication (Kasperson and
Kasperson 1996).
No Sandy
Sandy
30
Findings
• Individuals communicating about
Sandy were more than 10 times
less likely to broadcast climate
denial.
• During key Sandy days, climate
denial declined by 3 times.
• Of the total, climate denial
sampled through several key
words appears to be 2% of the
total Tweets– assuming
sampling errors by an order of
magnitude, climate denial
appears to be in a small minority.
Presented at:
“Fraud”
“Scam”
Outside
83% (49) 55% (27)
Main
Sandy
Dates
10/25-11/2 17% (10) 45% (22)
70% (14)
79% (22) 77% (112) Photo Credits (all Wikicommons)
30% (6)
21% (6)
All
(20)
(28)
(59)
“Lies”
Jacques, P. J. (2009). Environmental Skepticism: Ecology, Power,
and Public Life. Burlington, VT; Surrey, UK, Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
Kasperson, R. E. and J. X. Kasperson (1996). "The social
amplification and attenuation of risk." The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science: 95-105.
McCright, A. M. and R. E. Dunlap (2010). "Anti-reflexivity: The
American Conservative Movement’s Success in Undermining
Climate Science and Policy." Theory Culture Society 27(2/3): 100–
133.
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (2010). America’s Climate
Choices. Washington, DC, The National Academies.
University of Illinois, the Carbon Capture Report
(http://www.carboncapturereport.org/)
(49)
Total
•
U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Mark C.
Olsen/Release (below)
NASA image courtesy Norman Kuring, Ocean
23% (34)
Color Web-Sandy from space above.
(146)