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Animal Narratives and Emotional Resonance in #ClimateChange Discourse on Social Media: A Qualitative Content Analysis

Published: 14 October 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Teens, who are online almost constantly, engage with climate change posts on social media. We present the findings of a qualitative content analysis of the most popular climate change posts (tagged with #ClimateChange) on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Over four weeks in Spring 2022, we collected the top five weekly posts (n = 60) to understand how they address animals and emotions and relate to teens’ perceptions of climate change online based on prior survey work with 100 American teens. Our research reveals that more than a quarter (26.7%) of all analyzed posts relate to animals, and many (87.5%) employ negative language when discussing animals. We offer recommendations to enhance online climate change communication for teens, foster pro-environmental behaviors, attitudes, and activism, and study social media discourse across platforms. We highlight the need for further research on youth, climate change, and social media.

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cover image ACM Conferences
CSCW '23 Companion: Companion Publication of the 2023 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
October 2023
596 pages
ISBN:9798400701290
DOI:10.1145/3584931
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Published: 14 October 2023

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  1. Climate change
  2. Social computing
  3. Teenagers
  4. Youth

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