Tweeting Disaster: Observed Climate Risk Amplification Before,
During, and After Hurricane Sandy Peter Jacques, Gita Sukthankar,
Claire Knox University of Central Florida With help from Clayton
Besaw, research assistant Political Ecology Lab at UCF Methods n
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/)
http://www.carboncapturereport.org/ n 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. n Tweets were organized into a searchable datasheet and
then analyzed for content. n Other elements of this work will
include machine, crowd and expert analysis of a very large amounts
of data. Presented at: 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). Purpose 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). 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. Literature Cited 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-reexivity: The American Conservative Movements
Success in Undermining Climate Science and Policy." Theory Culture
Society 27(2/3): 100 133. NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (2010).
Americas Climate Choices. Washington, DC, The National Academies.
University of Illinois, the Carbon Capture Report
(http://www.carboncapturereport.org/)
http://www.carboncapturereport.org/ Photo Credits (all Wikicommons)
U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Mark C. Olsen/Release (below)
NASA image courtesy Norman Kuring, Ocean Color Web-Sandy from space
above. HoaxLiesFraudScamTotal Outside Main Sandy Dates 83% (49)55%
(27)70% (14)79% (22)77% (112) 10/25-11/217% (10)45% (22)30% (6)21%
(6)23% (34) All(59)(49)(20) (28) (146)
