The dynamics of issue attention in online communication on climate change

Abstract

Issues and their sub-topics in the public agenda follow certain dynamics of attention. This has been studied for "offline" media, but barely for online communication. Furthermore, the enormous spectrum of online communication has not been taken into account. This study investigates whether specific dynamics of attention on issues and sub-topics can be found in different online public arenas. We expect to identify differences across various arenas as a result of their specific stakeholders and constellations of stakeholders, as well as different trigger events. To examine these assumptions, we shed light on the online climate change discourse in Germany by undertaking a quantitative content analysis via manual and automated coding methods of journalistic articles and their reader comments, scientific expert blogs, discussion forums and social media at the time of the release of the 5th IPCC report and COP19, both in 2013 (n = 14.582). Our results show online public arena-specific dynamics of issue attention and sub-topics. In journalistic media, we find more continuous issue attention, compared to a public arena where everyone can communicate. Furthermore, we find event-specific dynamics of issue attention and sub-topics: COP19 received intensive and continuous attention and triggered more variation in the sub-topics than the release of the IPCC report.