Communicating Climate Change on TikTok During the Climate Summits : from the Environmental Issues to the Politicization of Discourse

Abstract

Climate Change (CC) communication is one of the most important areas to inform and raise awareness of the current climate emergency. This research studies how CC was communicated on the fastest growing platform, TikTok, during the Glasgow (2021) and Sharm el-Sheikh (2022) Climate Summits. Content analysis of the videos (N = 1013) showed a significant reduction in the number of CC-related videos during the Egypt Summit compared to its predecessor. While the Glasgow Summit was notable for addressing primarily environmental issues, the Sharm el-Sheikh one saw a politicization of the discourse, often unrelated to the climate issue. The results reveal that the main voices communicating CC on TikTok are influencers, media, and journalists, mostly men. The small number of sources of information cited in the videos is relevant. On the few occasions in which a source is mentioned, it is the media. These, in turn, do not report the origin of the information transmitted