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<p>Characterising the spreading of ideas within echo chambers is essential for understanding polarisation. In this article, we explore the characteristics of popular and viral content in climate change discussions on Twitter around the 2019 announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize, where we find the retweet network of users to be polarised into two well-separated groups of activists and sceptics. Operationalising popularity as the number of retweets and virality as the spreading probability inferred using an independent cascade model, we find that the viral themes echo and differ from the popular themes in interesting ways. Most importantly, we find that the most viral themes in the two groups reflect different types of bonds that tie the community together, yet both function to enhance ingroup connections while repulsing outgroup engagement. With this, our study sheds light, from an information-spreading perspective, on the formation and upkeep of echo chambers in climate discussions.</p>
</abstract>

Characterising the spreading of ideas within echo chambers is essential for understanding polarisation. In this article, we explore the characteristics of popular and viral content in climate change discussions on Twitter around the 2019 announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize, where we find the retweet network of users to be polarised into two well-separated groups of activists and sceptics. Operationalising popularity as the number of retweets and virality as the spreading probability inferred using an independent cascade model, we find that the viral themes echo and differ from the popular themes in interesting ways. Most importantly, we find that the most viral themes in the two groups reflect different types of bonds that tie the community together, yet both function to enhance ingroup connections while repulsing outgroup engagement. With this, our study sheds light, from an information-spreading perspective, on the formation and upkeep of echo chambers in climate discussions.

Spread of tweets in climate discussions: A case study of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize announcement

Nordic Journal of Media Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Characterising the spreading of ideas within echo chambers is essential for understanding polarisation. In this article, we explore the characteristics of...

Spread of tweets in climate discussions: A case study of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize announcement

Published Online: Jul 06, 2021

Page range: 96 - 117

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/njms-2021-0006

Keywords
climate politics, Twitter, virality, polarisation, social networks

© 2021 Yan Xia et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Spread of tweets in climate discussions: A case study of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize announcement

Published Online: Jul 06, 2021

Page range: 96 - 117

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/njms-2021-0006

Keywordsclimate politics, Twitter, virality, polarisation, social networks

© 2021 Yan Xia et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
climate politics, Twitter, virality, polarisation, social networks