Twitter Analytics-Based Assessment: Are the United States Coastal Regions Prepared for Climate Changeƒ

Abstract

According to the U.S. National Climate Assessment, the Southeast Coast and Gulf Coast of the United States are particularly susceptible to sea level rise, heat waves, hurricanes and lower accessibility to clean water due to climate change. Preparation for climate change consequences can only occur with conversation, which is a method of bringing awareness to the issue. Over the past decade, social media has taken over the spectrum of information exchange in the United States. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is the practice of analyzing trends in volume and opinion of a population of social media users. Twitter, one popular social media platform, is one of the largest microblogging sites in the world, and it provides an abundance of data related to the trending topics such as climate change. In this work, Twitter analytics is performed on the data generated from Twitter users in the United States, who were talking about climate change, global warming and/or CO2, from July 2016 to June 2017. Specifically, a comparative sentiment analysis on the coastal U.S. regions was conducted to recognize which region(s) is/are falling behind on the conversation about climate change and to understand the trends in opinion about climate change over time. The results determined that the southeast coast of the United States is deficient in their discussion about climate change compared to the other coastal regions. Igniting the conversation about this issue in these regions will mitigate the disasters due to climate change by increasing awareness in the people of these regions so they can properly prepare.