Change Isn’t Always Good

Posted on by Emily Muscarella

Our global climate has become an increasingly important issue in recent decades. Just this past October we experienced the warmest average monthly temperature on record according the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

For the past 25 years, leaders from around the world have been attending the Climate Change Conference to discuss this very evident climate change problem and come up with ways to address it. The conference begins today and people have taken to Twitter to voice their opinions on climate change this past week leading up to the conference. Users have been using the hashtag, #ClimateChange, to discuss climate change and to push the point that climate change is an issue and we must deal with it immediately. Twitter has put out an emoji of the Earth in the shape of a heart that appears after the hashtag #climatechange for the Climate Change Conference.

Within the past few days, several tweets like the ones below have been tweeted out poking fun at the lack of serious action being taken to fix the climate change problem.

Others have a more serious tone and focus on sharing the effects our actions (or lack there of) are having on our planet.

Some accounts, like CNN, have used the hashtag as a way to gather users’ opinions and concerns regarding climate change. I thought that this was an interesting and very effective use of the hashtag because it linked the question with the hashtag, which got it directly in front of interested users faces. This is an incredibly efficient way to collect user-generated material that CNN can then use to generate more content that it can put it out using #ClimateChange again.

There were also various tweets like the ones below that shared alternatives that could help reduce the impact we are having on climate change.

However, not all tweets using the hashtag supported the notion that the effects of climate change are going in the direction scientists are predicting, as shown by the tweet below. Additionally, some users also put out tweets that opposed climate change as being an issue by saying that it is natural.

Others criticized the Climate Change Convention itself by belittling the climate change issue.

Most of the tweets I have discussed were put out during the days leading up to the Climate Change Conference so I expect that the conversation happening under this hashtag will shift to one more focused on what is going on at the Conference, like the tweet below, containing users’ supporting and opposing views to what leaders are suggesting.

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