Publications

Project Publications:

Towards Understanding Climate Change Perceptions: A Social Media Dataset

Author(s): Katharina Prasse, Steffen Jung, Isaac Bravo, Stefanie Walter, and Margret Keuper
Date Published: December 16, 2023

Abstract:
Climate perceptions shared on social media are an invaluable barometer of public attention. By directing research towards this topic, we can eventually improve the effectiveness of climate change communication, increase public engagement, and enhance climate change education. We propose two real-world image datasets to promote impactful research both in the Computer Vision community and beyond. Firstly, ClimateTV, a dataset containing over 700,000 climate change-related images posted on Twitter and labelled on basis of the image hashtags. Secondly, ClimateCT, a Twitter dataset containing images with five-dimensional annotations in super-categories (i) Animals, (ii) Climate action, (iii) Consequences, (iv) Setting, and (v) Type. These challenging classification datasets contain classes which are designed according to their relevance in the context of climate change. The challenging nature of the datasets is given by varying class diversities (e.g. polar bear vs. land mammal) and foci (e.g. arctic vs. snowy residential area). The analyses of our datasets using CLIP embeddings and query optimization (CoCoOp) further showcase the challenging nature of ClimateTV and ClimateCT.

Citation: Prasse, K. et al. (2023) Towards Understanding Climate Change Perceptions: A Social Media Dataset. https://www.climatechange.ai/papers/neurips2023/3
Download the paper and the data.


Climate Imagery in the Media Landscape: A Systematic Literature Review, Challenges, and Future Research

Author(s): Isaac Bravo, Stefanie Walter, Katharina Prasse and Margret Keuper
Date Published: On review - Annals of the International Communication Association.

Abstract:
Visualisations play a key role in conveying the complexities of climate change to raise awareness and encourage informed action. This paper presents a combination of systematic and scoping literature review (2005 – 2023) that employs content analysis to analyse current research on climate change visualisations of traditional and digital media landscapes. Findings show that most existing research concentrates on traditional media to the detriment of social media, with a predominance of studies focused on Western countries. Framing theory emerges as the predominant theoretical framework, especially in qualitative studies. By analysing and comparing a large corpus of scientific studies, we aim to elucidate the predominant topics, methodologies, gaps, and further strive to outline key challenges and implications for future research directions.



Conference Presentations:

Towards Understanding Climate Change Perceptions: A Social Media Dataset.

Workshop Name: Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning
Location: New Orleans, USA
Author(s): Katharina Prasse, Steffen Jung, Isaac Bravo, Stefanie Walter & Margret Keuper
Date Presentation: 16 December, 2023

More information about the Workshop, see here.


Analysing the Role of Social Media in Shaping Public Opinion on Climate Change: A Comparative Study Across Regions Using Automated Image and Text Analysis.

Conference Name: WAPOR 76th Annual Conference
Location: Salzburg, Austria
Author(s): Isaac Bravo, Katharina Prasse, Stefanie Walter & Margret Keuper
Date Presentation: 28th-29th September, 2023

More information about the Conference, see here.


Analysing the effects of visual framing on social media in shaping people’s emotional engagement on climate change.

Workshop Name: Emotions in European Climate Politics workshop
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Author(s): Isaac Bravo, Katharina Prasse, Stefanie Walter & Margret Keuper
Date Presentation: 19-22 September, 2023

More information about the Workshop, see here.


Detecting Manipulated Visuals: A Computational Approach in the Climate Change Discourse.

Conference Name: Annual Conference of the “Science Communication” Division (DGPuK)
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Author(s): Katharina Prasse, Isaac Bravo, Stefanie Walter & Margret Keuper
Date Presentation: June 6-7, 2024

More information about the Conference, see here.


Computational Analysis of Manipulated Visual Content in Climate Change Discourse on Twitter.

Conference Name: 6th Annual COMPTEXT Conference 2024
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Author(s): Katharina Prasse, Isaac Bravo, Stefanie Walter & Margret Keuper
Date Presentation: 2-4 May, 2024

More information about the Conference, see here.