Bird flu hype: the spread of a disease outbreak through the media and Internet discussion groups

Bird flu, otherwise known as avian influenza, has attracted widespread public and global attention. The H5N1 avian influenza virus was first documented as infecting humans in Hong Kong in 1997, and many of those infected died subsequently from the virus that had been transmitted from poultry to humans. It took several years, however, before a hyped up type of public debate about bird flu began in around 2004. This article examines the hype surrounding public debates about bird flu in medical journals, newspapers and public discussion forums from 1997 to 2006. The article focuses on the development of the frequencies of published texts, and the terminology used in the three databases. The quantitative results will be accompanied by hermeneutic interpretation of the main sub-topics within the debates. These (preliminary) results contribute to research dealing with the emergence of hypes, and spread of public debates more generally

The greenhouse metaphor and the footprint metaphor: climate change risk assessment and risk management seen through the lens of two prominent metaphors

This article charts the emergence and framing of anthropogenic climate change as risk through the lens of two metaphors: greenhouse effect and carbon footprint. We argue that the greenhouse effect metaphor provided the scientific basis for framing climate change as a risk, indeed it can be seen as part of risk assessment. The carbon footprint metaphor, in turn, can be seen as belonging to the domain of risk management, as through this and other related metaphors, such as carbon offsetting, carbon budgets and the like, policy makers try to act upon the scientific risk assessment delivered by the greenhouse metaphor and encourage human behaviour change that reduces the risks of unmanaged climate change. We investigate how these key metaphors spread both in English news articles and in natural and social science articles and how they may shape current discourses and actions on climate change

Does the public discuss other topics on climate change than researchers? A comparison of explorative networks based on author keywords and hashtags

Twitter accounts have already been used in many scientometric studies, but the meaningfulness of the data for societal impact measurements in research evaluation has been questioned. Earlier research focused on social media counts and neglected the interactive nature of the data. We explore a new network approach based on Twitter data in which we compare author keywords to hashtags as indicators of topics. We analyze the topics of tweeted publications and compare them with the topics of all publications (tweeted and not tweeted). Our exploratory study is based on a comprehensive publication set of climate change research. We are interested in whether Twitter data are able to reveal topics of public discussions which can be separated from research-focused topics. We find that the most tweeted topics regarding climate change research focus on the consequences of climate change for humans. Twitter users are interested in climate change publications which forecast effects of a changing climate on the environment and to adaptation, mitigation and management issues rather than in the methodology of climate-change research and causes of climate change. Our results indicate that publications using scientific jargon are less likely to be tweeted than publications using more general keywords. Twitter networks seem to be able to visualize public discussions about specific topics.Comment: 31 pages, 1 table, and 7 figure

Measuring the Meaning of Words in Contexts: An automated analysis of controversies about ‘Monarch butterflies,’ ‘Frankenfoods,’ and ‘stem cells’

Scientometrics 67(2), 2006, 231-258Published in Scientometrics 67(2), 2006, 231-258. Abstract: Co-words have been considered as carriers of meaning across different domains in studies of science, technology, and society. Words and co-words, however, obtain meaning in sentences, and sentences obtain meaning in their contexts of use. At the science/society interface, words can be expected to have different meanings: the codes of communication that provide meaning to words differ on the varying sides of the interface. Furthermore, meanings and interfaces may change over time. Given this structuring of meaning across interfaces and over time, we distinguish between metaphors and diaphors as reflexive mechanisms that facilitate the translation between contexts. Our empirical focus is on three recent scientific controversies: Monarch butterflies, Frankenfoods, and stem-cell therapies. This study explores new avenues that relate the study of co-word analysis in context with the sociological quest for the analysis and processing of meaning

Gender differences in the climate change communication on Twitter

Purpose   We present a study about gender differences in the climate change communication on Twitter and in the use of affordances on Twitter. Design/methodology/approach   Our dataset consists of about 250,000 tweets and retweets for which the authors’ gender was identified. While content of tweets and hashtags used were analyzed for common topics and specific contexts, the usernames that were proportionately more frequently mentioned by either male or female tweeters were coded 1) according to the usernames’ stance in the climate change debate into convinced (that climate change is caused by humans), sceptics, neutrals and unclear groups, and 2) according to the type or role of the user account (e.g. campaign, organization, private person). Findings   The results indicate that overall male and female tweeters use very similar language in their tweets, but clear differences were observed in the use of hashtags and usernames, with female tweeters mentioning significantly more campaigns and organizations with a convinced attitude towards anthropogenic impact on climate change, while male tweeters mention significantly more private persons and usernames with a sceptical stance. The differences were even greater when retweets and duplicate tweets by the same author were removed from the data, indicating how retweeting can significantly influence the results. Practical implications   On a theoretical level our results increase our understanding for how women and men view and engage with climate change. This has practical implications for organizations interested in developing communication strategies for reaching and engaging female and male audiences on Twitter. While female tweeters can be targeted via local campaigns and news media, male tweeters seem to follow more political and scientific information. The results from the present research also showed that more research about the meaning of retweeting is needed, as we have shown how retweets can have a significant impact on the results. Originality/value   Our findings contribute towards increased understanding of both gender differences in the climate change debate and in social media use in general. Beyond that this research showed how retweeting may have a significant impact on research where tweets are used as a data source.  </p

Climate change on Twitter: topics, communities and conversations about the 2013 IPCC report

In September 2013 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its first comprehensive assessment of physical climate science in six years, constituting a critical event in the societal debate about climate change. This paper analyses the nature of this debate in one public forum: Twitter. Using webometric methods, tweets were analyzed to discover the hashtags used when people tweeted about the IPCC report, and how Twitter users formed communities around their conversational connections. In short, the paper presents the topics and tweeters at this particular moment in the climate debate. The most used hashtags related to themes of science, geographical location and social issues connected to climate change. Particularly noteworthy were tweets connected to Australian politics, US politics, geoengineering and fracking. Three communities of Twitter users were identified. Researcher coding of Twitter users showed how these varied according to geographical location and whether users were convinced or critical of climate science or policy in their Twitter usage. Overall, users were most likely to converse with users holding similar views. However, two communities displayed significant links between climate convinced and critical users, suggesting that those engaged in the climate debate were exposed to views contrasting with their own