Polarization of Climate Politics Results from Partisan Sorting: Evidence from Finnish Twittersphere

TL;DR

This study examines how climate politics in Finland's Twitter discourse during 2019 elections is influenced by partisan sorting and issue alignment, especially with immigration, highlighting the impact of right-wing populism.

Contribution

It introduces a network approach to analyze social media data, revealing the partisan sorting and issue alignment of climate politics in the context of European political polarization.

Findings

Climate politics is less polarized than other issues.

Climate politics is consistently aligned with immigration.

Partisan sorting influences climate discourse on Twitter.

Abstract

Prior research shows that public opinion on climate politics sorts along partisan lines. However, they leave open the question of whether climate politics and other politically salient issues exhibit tendencies for issue alignment, which the political polarization literature identifies as among the most deleterious aspects of polarization. Using a network approach and social media data from the Twitter platform, we study polarization of public opinion toward climate politics and ten other politically salient topics during the 2019 Finnish elections as the emergence of opposing groups in a public forum. We find that while climate politics is not particularly polarized compared to the other topics, it is subject to partisan sorting and issue alignment within the universalist-communitarian dimension of European politics that arose following the growth of right-wing populism. Notably, climate politics is consistently aligned with the immigration issue, and temporal trends indicate that this phenomenon will likely persist.