Wildfires and Climate Change: What does social media tell us on linkages and public understanding? (Preliminary White Paper, February 11, 2022)

Abstract: Wildfires are increasing in frequency and size across the western U.S., with some of the deadliest fires in recorded history occurring in the last few years. The public, as well as elected officials, use social media to convey opinions and knowledge on topics that are impacting their communities. We utilize the platform Twitter to assess connections of wildfire to climate change during recent events and evaluate the differences in knowledge between the public and their government officials. Results show some linkages of wildfire cause and effect, although this relationship was not large (only 5%) and was even lower at the governmental level (2%), suggesting that a broader number of the public and government did not relate climate change to recent extreme wildfires.