Responses to heat waves: what can Twitter data tell us?

Author:

Zander Kerstin K.ORCID,Rieskamp Jonas,Mirbabaie Milad,Alazab Mamoun,Nguyen Duy

Abstract

AbstractIncreasing average temperatures and heat waves are having devasting impacts on human health and well-being but studies of heat impacts and how people adapt are rare and often confined to specific locations. In this study, we explore how analysis of conversations on social media can be used to understand how people feel about heat waves and how they respond. We collected global Twitter data over four months (from January to April 2022) using predefined hashtags about heat waves. Topic modelling identified five topics. The largest (one-third of all tweets) was related to sports events. The remaining two-thirds could be allocated to four topics connected to communication about climate-related heat or heat waves. Two of these were on the impacts of heat and heat waves (health impacts 20%; social impacts 16%), one was on extreme weather and climate change attribution (17%) and the last one was on perceptions and warning (13%). The number of tweets in each week corresponded well with major heat wave occurrences in Argentina, Australia, the USA and South Asia (India and Pakistan), indicating that people posting tweets were aware of the threat from heat and its impacts on the society. Among the words frequently used within the topic ‘Social impacts’ were ‘air-conditioning’ and ‘electricity’, suggesting links between coping strategies and financial pressure. Apart from analysing the content of tweets, new insights were also obtained from analysing how people engaged with Twitter tweets about heat or heat waves. We found that tweets posted early, and which were then shared by other influential Twitter users, were among the most popular. Finally, we found that the most popular tweets belonged to individual scientists or respected news outlets, with no evidence that misinformation about climate change-related heat is widespread.

Funder

Charles Darwin University

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Subject

Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous),Atmospheric Science,Water Science and Technology

Cited by 8 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3