Social Media and Climate Change – SoMeCliCS

Social media describes a variety of platforms, that allow to communicate with other people via internet-based services (Carr & Hayes, 2015). Within social media, different categories such as social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) and social messenger (e.g., WhatsApp, Telegram) can be differentiated.

Social media is no new phenomenon, which is why many studies have already examined the role of social media. For example, big data analyses were able to investigate the effects of echo chambers (e.g., Williams et al., 2015). Nevertheless, these studies often exclude the psychological perspective of social media (Montag et al., 2016).

Science education (biology, chemistry, and physics education) are in a prominent position here, as they combine the respective content knowledge with relevant pedagogical and psychological processes. We understand the viewing and processing of subject-related content in social media as informal learning, which we investigate from a science educational point of view.

In addition to this connecting role of science didactics, researchers from the L3S support the project by developing modern computational techniques to grasp the large amounts of data.

Even if the possible effects of climate change have been known for many years, a sufficient approach of mitigation has not been started. While the science behind the topic is complex and therefore hard to understand, people also are confronted with motivated biases that can be fostered in social media due to phenomena such as echo chambers, filter bubbles, and fake news.

Given the urgency of the topic of climate change, we believe the topic is a perfect example for unravelling the effects of social media for scientific topics. The results may therefore also contribute to a wider understanding of social media in society and illustrate ways to prepare living in modern digital societies.

The overall project is defined by five different subprojects, which all include specific aims. First, we are interested in the usage (U) of social media for the topic of climate change. Based on this, the next package defines the required literacies (L) needed for acting competently in social media. Both packages inform possible interventions (I), describing ways to foster the literacies in formal learning contexts. All these projects are supported by the package of digital methods (DM), in which the L3S supports the research with methods from computer science.

Concerning the distribution of the project results, all projects contribute to the final package science communication (SC), which includes web visibility, own scientific conferences, and an edited volume.

The project started in July 2021 and will be finished in 2024. Within the first year, we establish the project and start with first research packages. In March 2022 we had our kick-off-meeting, on which we further discussed the research strategies. These will be part of the second year, which will also involve a meeting in March 2023. This second meeting will also play a major role in the edited volume. This edited volume and the finalization of the research will be a major part of the final year, which will also be ended with a final presentation and transfer of our project results.

As described in the project overview, we have overall four main research packages: Usage, literacies, interventions, and digital media. Each of these projects involves own research aims, described in further detail on this page.

Usage

As a first aim of our project is to define how people and particularly students use social media for the topic of climate change. Within this aim we investigate the general role of social media (U1) and possible connections (U2) with other variables. For the role of social media, we currently apply qualitative methods for investigating how people perceive social media content in social media. As a final objective, we will generalize the results to a larger audience (U3).

Literacies

The second major aim of the project is to define required literacies for the topic of climate change in social media. For this, we first conduct a systematic literature review (L1) about relevant existing literacies and then state the literacies (L2) for students. In the final package, possible influences on these literacies are investigated (L3).

Interventions

The aim of the third subproject is to investigate possibilities to foster the defined literacies in interventions. To be able to investigate effects of these interventions, we develop a measurement instrument (I1), which then will be applied in an inquiry oriented (I2) and training oriented (I3) intervention.

Digital methods

While the packages are focused on relevant subject specific research questions, the methods require certain skills in the face of digital methods. These includes using techniques such as machine learning or eye-tracking, to uncover the role of social media for science education in a larger set of data by allowing a high resolution of the learning processes.

Science communication

For all packages, we plan different activities to communicate our results. This includes web visibility (SC1), different scientific meetings (SC2), and an edited volume at the end of the project (SC3).

The project is a collaboration of the Institute for Science Education and the L3S Research Center at Leibniz University Hannover.

We also collaborate with colleagues from the Justus-Liebig-University Gießen. While the project leading is with the Institute of Science Education, we have different people working with the project. An overview of all involved people in alphabetical order and their roles can be found in the table.

Teachers represent one major stakeholder group for the project, as we want to equip them with required knowledge for preparing their students for acting literate in social media, particularly for the topic of climate change.

Now we are working on concrete teaching concepts. These will be published in places like Unterricht Biologie or similar as the project progresses. Two articles have been published recently.