This document summarizes a research study that analyzed tweets related to COP21, a United Nations climate change conference. The study collected over 18,000 tweets per day leading up to and during the conference to analyze perspectives on climate change expressed, influential users, and characteristics of popular tweets. Key findings included that tweets with positive views of climate change were most common, and users with over 10,000 followers who tweeted images, slogans, or short videos saw high rates of retweets. The researchers recommend climate communicators utilize popular organizations and create concise, shareable messages.

1. Capturing Tweets on Climate Change: What is the Role of Twitter in Climate Change Communication?
“How many tweets, would a
tweeter tweet, if a tweeter
could tweet about
climate?...”
Research
Objectives
❖To determine how Twitter is used by the
public during a distinct climate change
event - the COP21 conference
❖To follow and collect tweets about what
people are saying on Twitter about climate
change as they relate to COP21 and
determine the:
➢ the type of twitter users that
generate climate information and
the frequency of tweets/re-tweets
➢ the category of the tweets in regard
to positive, negative, and neutral
positions about climate change
➢ the characteristics of
pervasive/long-lasting tweets
Methodology
Steps of Collecting Tweets:
1.Go to advanced search in Twitter account
2.Click on NCapture for NVivo and capture the
tweets
3.Import from NCapture
4.Export dataset and open exported file
5.Open in Microsoft Excel, organize, and
analyze the data
6.Quantitatively analyze data by frequency
count, user/sources, etc.
7.Qualitatively analyze data by source and
perspective on climate
Angel Ngo2
, Sarah Luginbuhl2
, Karen S. McNeal2
, Jonathan M. Enteen1
Department of Geology, Wake Tech Community College1
Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University2
Discussion
❖Climate change events spur hundreds to
thousands of tweets per day on Twitter
❖Over time, more tweets were made leading up to
the COP21 conference (e.g., in Dec there have
been more than 18,000 tweets per day!).
❖For the COP21 release, Twitter played the
greatest role with users that had a positive
perspective about climate change
❖Much of the climate content were re-tweets of
original postings
❖Twitter users with more than 10,000 followers (e.
g., NGOs, politicians, actors, professional athletes,
news organizations, etc.) greatly influenced the
original climate content that was most frequently re-
tweeted
❖Images, short phrases/slogans/news releases and
short videos were most pervasive
❖Climate communicators should utilize
organizations with high numbers of followers and
create messages that have the above
characteristics
Future Work
❖Global analysis using GIS
❖Pathway analysis of re-tweets
❖Track tweets during/after COP21
❖Continue content analysis on tweets
❖Analyze the types of media utilized by tweeters
Project
Description
This research followed and collected tweets
about climate change as they related to the
recent COP21 conference, a United Nations
climate change conference, held on Dec. 7-8,
2015 in Paris. Using a Twitter account and a
web browser add-on called NCapture, we were
able to collect hundreds of thousands of tweets
that were loaded into a program called NVivo
which stored the tweets and associated user
information including the people and
organizations which were tweeting about climate
change. We followed the COP21 hashtag. The
outcomes of this research will assist climate
change communicators in order to understand
the role Twitter plays in regard to climate
change discourse.
Geocognition and
Geoscience Education
Research Group
Figure 1. This pie chart illustrates the differing perspectives of
Twitter users on anthropogenic climate change. The sampling
size is 2119 tweeters from a total of 21,118 tweets from August
2015 to October 2015.
QR Code for
Lab Website
Usernames of Accounts with > 10,000 Followers
August September October November
CasillasWorld UN DalaiLama YouTube
UN lemondefr Reuters CNN
UNICEF kuyakim_atienza UN narendramodi
lemondefr elespectador CasillasWorld LeoDiCaprio
TwitterFrance wef lemondefr BBCWorld
algore ANCALERTS guardian DalaiLama
JaredLeto TerraNoticiasBR ELTIEMPO detikcom
WWF the_hindu cnni TheEconomist
20Minutes FRANCE24 Estadao Reuters
Le_Figaro 20Minutes algore WhiteHouse
WorldBank noticiAmerica wef g1
nhk_news StateDept Anggun_Cipta FoxNews
Greenpeace Le_Figaro ANCALERTS mashable
BFMTV PresidenciaMX CaracolRadio NoticiasCaracol
le_Parisien libe WRadioColombia NoticiasRCN
afpfr WorldBank ariannahuff CarlosLoret
fhollande Greenpeace WWF timesofindia
Twitter Users with the Most Retweeted Tweets with > 10,000 Followers for Each Month
Month Username Tweet Number of
Retweets
Bio
August CasillasWorld Preocupado por el futuro de nuestro planeta. Únete contra el
#cambioclimatico #COP21 http://t.co/lJN4tpmz51 http://t.co/VR8qij4UeF
944 Soccer Pro
September UnileverWorld How can trees create jobs for young people? Check out @CharlesBatte's
film to find out http://t.co/X0oLh8nwOo #COP21 http://t.co/V28dsRCb0F
450 NGO
October DalaiLama Tibet's ecology needs protecting, not just for Tibetans, but for the health and
sustainability of the entire world https://t.co/ChvwaDFygy
1340 Religious Figure
November StationCDRKelly #Paris as it appeared this morning from @Space_Station. #COP21 @UN
#YearInSpace https://t.co/SXjEoOSXrN
3024 Astronaut
Figure 2. This bar graph illustrates the numbers of tweets and
number of retweeted messages for each month. The arrows illustrate
which Twitter users were retweeted the most as shown in chart below.