International Conference on Knowledge Management

Global warming is the term used to describe critical environmental issues and concerns. Social media such as Twitter provides a platform for people to share information, exchange ideas, and express their opinions about current and timely issues. This study utilized contextual analysis to analyze data collected from Twitter for the hashtag "global warming" during the period 2010 & 2011. Using sentiment analysis and topic modeling, the study aimed first at assessing people's perception towards global warming issues, and second study the impact of misinformation from the standpoint of social noise on people's perception of global warming during critical environmental events. The outcome of this study helps create a better understanding of the environmental issues discussed on social media. The sentiment analysis from the data analyzed so far shows that most of the tweets were based on Twitter users' personal opinions and not science. The topic modeling results suggest that Twitter users typically tweeted when a major environmental event occurred due to global warming. Topic modeling also aids in the identification of terms that is associated with social noise. The presence of social noise suggests that misinformation does exist and spreads faster