Adaptation, Arsonists, and Apocalypses: Exploring Social Representations of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Australian Social Media Before and During the "Black Summer Bushfires"
Date
2022
Authors
Osborne, Mitchell
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Abstract
Australia's 2019-2020 "Black Summer Bushfires" were an unprecedented extreme weather event, which evidence suggests was made substantially worse by the effects of anthropogenic climate change. This event, and previous weather events, have been demonstrated to affect how people view climate change, with general research findings indicating that extreme weather events increase people's agreement and acceptance of the existence of climate change. However, there is still little research into how these extreme weather events affect the views of people who do not believe in the existence of climate change. This study aims to rectify this gap in the research. By using qualitative reflexive Thematic Analysis, 999 unique tweets were assessed within a Social Representations Theory framework to explore how individual's representations of climate change were affected due to the Black Summer Bushfires. The results of this thematic analysis indicated denialist representations fractured during January as they were unable to reconcile their representations of climate change not being real with evidence the bushfires were caused and exacerbated by climate change. Additionally, consensus, science-based representations were made more cohesive from the fires and made explicit use of the bushfires as physical evidence of climate change to both advance the consensus representation and depoliticise the argument surrounding climate change. These results suggest that more atypical extreme weather events, like the Black Summer Fires, have an increased impact on social representations of climate change, resulting in substantial changes for both consensus-based views and denialist-based views.
School/Discipline
School of Psychology
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Thesis (B.PsychSc(Hons)) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 2023
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