Blogging and tweeting climate change in South Africa

Communicating adaptation to climate change: the art and science of public engagement when climate change comes home

“…There are a number of reasons, however, why it is particularly challenging to track media coverage on adaptation: Linguistic bias : As discussed above, there are myriad ways of talking about adaptation in public discourse, the most challenging of which is when the word adaptation is not even used, but only sector‐specific plans or actions are described (in coastal areas, for example, discussions of beach nourishment, or building hard shoreline protection, retreating from the coast or dealing with relocation of roads, airports, or water‐related infrastructure). Outlet bias : To make news searches manageable, researchers often focus on leading national (elite and popular) newspapers and/or magazines, and only reflect the discourse at that level; adaptation actions undertaken in local settings are easily missed that way. This is aggravated by the widely observed trend that small local newspapers and the number of qualified journalists that could report on these activities are in decline. Geographic bias : There is a well‐recognized bias in climate change media studies in favor of developed nations, thus not only under‐representing insights from other parts of the world, but also biasing what types of issues are covered. For example, given the generally greater financial resources in developed nations, which enable large‐scale infrastructure projects, an impression may arise that this is the sort of adaptation that mostly gets done. …”

A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of El Niño on Twitter: Spatial, Social, Temporal, and Semantic Perspectives

“…Hibberd and Buchanan also argued that information on social media does not allow users to fully understand the economic and political impact of extreme weather [36]. Bosch, Jang and Hart pointed out that hoax frames of climate change on Twitter were more frequent in the United States than in other countries especially during major events [6,37]. In addition, Smith et al identified the disparities between emotions expressed by users in different languages for an event on social media [38].…”

“…Analyzing the discussions on social media platforms is essential to tackle the complex issues associated with disasters and risks [1][2][3][4][5]. Information can reach vast audiences immediately through social media [6,7], becoming a major source for understanding public perceptions on natural disasters [8]. The study of how people perceive risks and natural disasters on social media can advance our knowledge of risk communication [9].…”

‘Offline’ vs ‘online’ media: Claim-makers, content, and audiences of climate change information

“…Interdependences between offline and online media are often cited, in particular in terms of web searches of information already reported by traditional media (both print and television). In some other cases, the study of the intermedia agenda shows that the debate originated on online blogs triggers and conditions the attention of print media (Bosch, 2012;Hellsten & Vasileiadou, 2015;Lineman et al, 2015). This interdependence is also testified by a polarisation between 'activists' and 'contrarians' in both online and offline arenas.…”