Climate Change Skeptics and the Power of Negativity

Climate change is a polarized topic on social media in the U.S. Actors who advocate climate change as scientific fact, or tout it as a conspiracy, both post videos on YouTube. Both kinds of videos can receive millions of views and thousands of comments. Given the polarized nature of the topic, we might expect a high degree of vitriolic speech in the comments around the videos. Previous Twitter studies would also suggest significant differences in the networks made from the interactions of such comments and replies. This study focuses on these comments and replies in an effort to understand the nature of discourse surrounding climate change believer and skeptic videos. Our hope is to extend the existing literature studying scientific communication around climate change, which to our knowledge hasn't specifically compared discussions around both climate change believers or skeptics on YouTube. Results show most users only comment on other users that align with their own perspectives about climate change, and express positive sentiment toward them. Our study also finds that the more negative the users' comment, the more connections they have with other users. These findings indicate further investigations of climate change social activities on YouTube.