Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. How did Uncle Sam become a symbol for the United States? Henry E, age 10, Somerville, Massachusetts Most Americans easily recognize Uncle Sam as a…
In this empirical study, we collected about 6.8 million tweets that mentioned “fake news”, and we extracted references to climate change and/or global warming to understand the public discourses around these two issues. Using a mixed method, the study’s findings show that there is a clear politically polarized discussion on climate change. We found that the majority of tweets focus on the U.S. context though references to other Western coutnries are often made. The anti-Liberal or anti-Democratic online community was more active on Twitter than the anti-conservative or anti-Republican community. Also, more than half the examined most retweeted posts contained claims about climate change being a natural cycle or even denying it exists, while about a third of these tweets stated that climate change was anthropogenic. The implications of the study are discussed, we argue that fake news as a term has a hollow meaning as it is used as a buzzword to discredit opponents and further the
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.