The Role of Science in the Climate Change Discussions on Reddit
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866912223596642304 |
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| author | Cornale, Paolo Tizzani, Michele Ciulla, Fabio Kalimeri, Kyriaki Omodei, Elisa Paolotti, Daniela Mejova, Yelena |
| author_facet | Cornale, Paolo Tizzani, Michele Ciulla, Fabio Kalimeri, Kyriaki Omodei, Elisa Paolotti, Daniela Mejova, Yelena |
| contents | Collective and individual action necessary to address climate change hinges on the public's understanding of the relevant scientific findings. In this study, we examine the use of scientific sources in the course of 14 years of public deliberation around climate change on one of the largest social media platforms, Reddit. We find that only 4.0% of the links in the Reddit posts, and 6.5% in the comments, point to domains of scientific sources, although these rates have been increasing in the past decades. These links are dwarfed, however, by the citations of mass media, newspapers, and social media, the latter of which peaked especially during 2019-2020. Further, scientific sources are more likely to be posted by users who also post links to sources having central-left political leaning, and less so by those posting more polarized sources. Unfortunately, scientific sources are not often used in response to links to unreliable sources. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_05026 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | The Role of Science in the Climate Change Discussions on Reddit Cornale, Paolo Tizzani, Michele Ciulla, Fabio Kalimeri, Kyriaki Omodei, Elisa Paolotti, Daniela Mejova, Yelena Computers and Society Social and Information Networks Collective and individual action necessary to address climate change hinges on the public's understanding of the relevant scientific findings. In this study, we examine the use of scientific sources in the course of 14 years of public deliberation around climate change on one of the largest social media platforms, Reddit. We find that only 4.0% of the links in the Reddit posts, and 6.5% in the comments, point to domains of scientific sources, although these rates have been increasing in the past decades. These links are dwarfed, however, by the citations of mass media, newspapers, and social media, the latter of which peaked especially during 2019-2020. Further, scientific sources are more likely to be posted by users who also post links to sources having central-left political leaning, and less so by those posting more polarized sources. Unfortunately, scientific sources are not often used in response to links to unreliable sources. |
| title | The Role of Science in the Climate Change Discussions on Reddit |
| topic | Computers and Society Social and Information Networks |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.05026 |