Climate Policy and e-Participation Resilience: Insights from Social Media

Abstract

Social media content on climate change and geological hazards show an exponential increment in recent years. The citizens’ narratives about threats to ecosystems are largely mobilized by protests against resource exploitations or disaster rescue operations. This database is less captured or reported for gaining insights about participants’ competency in influencing the climate policies. The proposed study aims to address the knowledge gap on how to improve the climate policies by enabling e-participation from the citizens. Required data for the study is collected from Twitter social media content pertinent to climate and metaphorical analysis of resilience issues with an automated system. Sentiment analysis and community detection of Twitter content are carried out using a program developed in R. The people have expressed trust in the rehabilitation and other efforts by the government during the flood. Though the people show trust, anger and disgust are also part of the opinions. Despite the diverse attitudes and beliefs, the people exhibited an interest in inclusiveness. In its entirety, the study captured factors influencing the competency of e-participants in influencing the climate change issues effectively. Policy recommendations for improving the citizens’ competency for meaningful e-participation on climate issues are provided.