Politicized Attention Shifts Amplify Polarization in the Information Ecosystem during California Wildfires

TL;DR

This study analyzes over 1.3 million social media posts during California wildfires to reveal how polarization and engagement amplify negative perceptions of government institutions, affecting communication dynamics in digital ecosystems.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of polarization, network modularity, and engagement effects in wildfire-related social media discourse, highlighting the impact of politicized attention shifts.

Findings

Negative sentiment toward officials increases during wildfires.

Social networks become more polarized and modular over time.

High engagement content disproportionately influences public discourse.

Abstract

Wildfires require governments to communicate under conditions of urgency, uncertainty, and intense public scrutiny, yet such communication now unfolds within a digitally mediated environment shaped by polarization and engagement-based amplification. We analyze over 1.3 million wildfire-related social media posts from California (2016-2025) to examine how institutional actors are evaluated within this landscape. Users' stance toward government is actor-specific: individual political officials are discussed more negatively than operational agencies across federal, state, and local levels, and this gap widens during extreme wildfire events. Moreover, interaction networks become increasingly modular over time, consolidating into polarized communities in which negativity concentrates within cohesive clusters. Engagement-weighted measures show that highly interactive negative content disproportionately shapes visible discourse, while crisis periods redirect attention from emergency agencies to high-profile political figures, reinforcing reputational divergence. These findings indicate that wildfire communication operates within a polarized, engagement-ranked ecosystem in which evaluative tone, network structure, and visibility dynamics jointly shape institutional perception. Effective disaster communication should therefore account for the structural conditions of contemporary digital public communities.