Studying Climate Change in Social Media

Climate change and environmental issues are nowadays a great challenge for the society. In this regard, the recent United Nations Conference on Climate Change held in Paris (COP 21) highlights the importance of carrying out initiatives that are effective in practice. However, it is important to note that there is a lack of recent and comparable international environmental data, which is very important when trying to advance in emerging issues aimed to combat climate change. Therefore, the main objective of this project is to use new data sources, through the analysis of what is known as "Big Data". In this sense, data from social networks such as Twitter will be analized through the use of recent text mining techniques. This will constitute a big step forward; because first, we can develop new and more precise and synthetic indexes (after the proper sample corrections) wich would allow us to define the level of knowledge, environmental awareness and preferences for certain adaptation and mitigation policies. This will give us access to almost inmediate information which is not recoded or manipulated in any way. Second, we will be able to assess additional issues related to risk concerns, and uncertainty of climate change in the context of credibility of the message sender. Additional lines of research will also look at potential new emerging temporal trends in decisions. To conclude, the obtained results will be compared and contrasted with others obtained via surveys or controlled experiments, throught the appropiate adjustements.