Who Leads the Conversation on Climate Change?: A Study of a Global Network of NGOs on Twitter

Abstract

Using a big data approach, this study investigates how climate change NGOs across the world connect and interact on Twitter. It found that despite being members of a global alliance that aims to organize concerted efforts to battle climate change, NGOs rarely connect or interact on Twitter. In addition, the Global North/South hierarchy is perpetuated in the network of these NGOs, with those from Global North and Oceania playing the role of opinion leaders on Twitter and dominating the conversations on climate change. Our social network analysis found that the network density is sparse, with a very low density. It also identified several types of centralities, conceptualized as connectivity, as predictors of an organization’s tweeting frequency and online opinion leadership. Practical and theoretical implications for interorganizational communication and online opinion leadership were discussed.