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Attention, sentiments and emotions towards emerging climate technologies on Twitter

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journal contribution
posted on 2025-04-14, 13:55 authored by F Müller-Hansen, T Repke, CM Baum, E Brutschin, MW Callaghan, R Debnath, WF Lamb, S Low, S Lück, C Roberts, Benjamin SovacoolBenjamin Sovacool, JC Minx
Public perception of emerging climate technologies, such as greenhouse gas removal (GGR) and solar radiation management (SRM), will strongly influence their future development and deployment. Studying perceptions of these technologies with traditional survey methods is challenging, because they are largely unknown to the public. Social media data provides a complementary line of evidence by allowing for retrospective analysis of how individuals share their unsolicited opinions. Our large-scale, comparative study of 1.5 million tweets covers 16 GGR and SRM technologies and uses state-of-the-art deep learning models to show how attention, and expressions of sentiment and emotion developed between 2006 and 2021. We find that in recent years, attention has shifted from general geoengineering themes to specific GGR methods. On the other hand, there is little attention to specific SRM technologies and they often coincide with conspiracy narratives. Sentiments and emotions in GGR tweets tend to be more positive, particularly for methods perceived to be natural, but are more negative when framed in the geoengineering context.

Funding

GENIE: GeoEngineering and NegatIve Emissions pathways in Europe : European Research Council | 951542

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Global Environmental Change

ISSN

0959-3780

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Volume

83

Article number

102765

Department affiliated with

  • Business and Management Publications
  • SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit Publications

Institution

University of Sussex

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes