Twitter's messages about hydrometeorological events. A study on the social impact of climate change

Abstract

This study is based on an interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists from natural and social sciences to create scientific knowledge about how Twitter is valuable to understand the social impact of hydrometeorological events. The capacity of citizens' reaction through Twitter to environmental issues is widely analyzed in the current scientific literature. Previous scientific works, for example, investigated the role of social media in preventing natural disasters. This study gives scientific evidence on the existence of diversity in the intentionality of Twitters' messages related to hydrometeorological events. The methodological design is formed by four experiments implemented in different moments of a temporal axis. The social impact on social media methodology (SISM) is implemented as social media analytics. From the findings obtained, it can be observed that there are different forms of intentionality in Twitter's messages related to hydrometeorological events depending on the contextual circumstances and on the characteristics of Twitter's users' profiles (including the geolocation when this information is available). This content is relevant for future works addressed to define social media communication strategies that can promote specific reactions in vulnerable groups in front the climate change.