This study investigates the patterns of communications between climate scientists and the lay publics on Twitter. As discussion on climate change is increasingly associated with political and social issues, we aim to identify the communication strategies of a sample of scientists and their effects on the lay publics’ responses.
Through both quantitative and qualitative methods, we analyzed a sample of tweets and comments to develop potential principles for effective scientific communication on social media. The results confirm that scientists should frame their communication on climate change in new ways in order to make connections with domains related to the current debates surrounding the climate change and to make it more relevant to lay public’s experiences.
By analyzing the publics’ comments section, we also identified the presence of inter- and intra-group tensions between believers and non-believers in climate change, and between optimistic and pessimistic believers (or “doomers”). Moreover, visual communication emerged as a tool used both by scientists and the publics to inform and express their opinions, often in humorous ways.
This study provides practical recommendations on how to make climate change communication more effective by building and managing the communities of social media users who interact with scientific content on social media.