Evaluation of certainty in climate change discussions on Twitter and Reddit
What is it about?
"Epistemic stance" refers to the evaluation of certainty, likelihood or truth value, through words such as "unsure", "probably" or "accurate". Using text data of 1.2 million words, I compare the use of epistemic stance by people who believe in climate science ("proponents") and people who do not believe climate change is real ("skeptics"). I also compare the two ideological groups on Twitter and Reddit, to see whether the platforms differ when it comes to the evaluation of certainty.
Why is it important?
Epistemic stance in social media posts represent people's opinions, commitment to, and priorities in the world. In climate change discussions, proponents mainly evaluate the likelihood of climate scenarios, whereas skeptics take an active antagonistic position in discussing the truth-value of climate science. Claims about the certainty of information matters also because social media is a source of news for many people. For researchers studying language or discourse, it is important to remember that platforms have different styles or registers of communication. Comparing Reddit and Twitter, I found that Reddit is more interactive and dialogical in form, which influences the frequency of epistemic stance used for interactive functions.