Tweeting on a rapidly warming planet: Environmental communication social media research

For the environmental communication field to meet the challenges presented by a rapidly warming planet, researchers need to provide scholarship that translates into actionable, research-informed best practices. Based on a decade in the field, in this chapter I reflect on the state of digital environmental communication research. I argue three main points. First, online climate misinformation and disinformation remain understudied relative to environmental and climate activism and advocacy campaigning. Second, social media apps and platforms are not interchangeable, as their affordances, audiences, and usages are not homogeneous across popular and niche apps. Third, as social media platforms continue to evolve, so too must research methods. Researchers need to focus on studying processes over specific social media apps and digital platforms. I conclude by proposing that additional attention is needed in the field towards an emerging research area of rapid social media attribution studies to amplify the impact of digital climate and environmental communication research.