Evaluating Twitter for Use in Environmental Awareness Campaigns

Many studies have shown that the effective harnessing of ICTs is critical in local, national, and global efforts to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change. Citizens must be provided with accurate information about environmental issues and should receive this through the most effective communication channels available. In this paper we describe work in progress in evaluating Twitter as a means of distributing environmental information to citizens. This work will attempt to measure how effective the Twitter medium can be in environmental awareness campaigns for issues such as climate change by carrying out an analysis of a regularly updated database of Twitter messages. This work will also look to establish if users are environmental issues through their Twitter networks