Martin Svozil and Petr Ocelík on the polarization of climate change debate
Martin Svozil (PhD candidate at the department) and Petr Ocelík with Antti Gronow from the University of Helsinki co-authored a piece titled “Climate Polarization on Czech Social Media After Trump’s Announcement to Withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement”.
The research examines how Trump’s signaled withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2017 triggered strong polarization within the Twitter/X climate debate. Interestingly, the polarization of elite actors, such as politicians and journalists, was extremely high already before the event, which shows that common Twitter/X users likely followed the elites as their polarization increased markedly. These findings point to the importance of the elite cues in shaping the public debate.
Read the article here .
