Van Berkel, D. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2026

Decentralized social media for environmental research

Social media data are reshaping environmental research. However, recent ownership and policy changes on centralized platforms like Twitter/X have motivated many users to seek new alternatives while simultaneously accelerating data restrictions for scientists. Decentralized social media, particularly Bluesky and Mastodon, are emerging as alternatives for users seeking greater control over their data and as a more stable and sustainable source of data for researchers. This rise may be instrumental in revitalizing the role of social media in environmental research. This study aims to provide a first-of-its-kind analysis of the potential of these new sources for environmental research, demonstrating their potential usefulness through the examples of climate change discourses and people's appreciation of wildlife. We find an increased adoption of Mastodon and Bluesky, with high linguistic diversity, even if dominated by English. Wildlife image content reveals broad taxonomic diversity, with plants, birds, and insects dominating the records. We find this pattern broadly consistent with that observed on the popular citizen science platform iNaturalist. Climate change discourse is found to broadly reflect the scientific consensus on both platforms, with contrarian claims remaining uncommon. This suggests that researchers may benefit from less polarized opinions and misinformation, arising from interactions that are less driven by engagement maximizing algorithms implemented in other platforms. Our study illustrates the promise of decentralized social media as a new data source for environmental scientists and paves the way for their broader use in environmental research.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

Biological changes, political ideology, and scientific communication shape human perceptions of pollen seasons

Climate change is changing the timing and intensity of pollen seasons, thereby increasing human exposure to allergenic pollen. Climate-driven changes in pollen seasons present a unique opportunity to craft messaging aimed at communicating climate change impacts on public health through changes in the biological systems. However, it is unclear how pollen seasons are experienced and understood by the public, including how well we detect pollen seasons or what factors we view as responsible for changes in pollen seasons. Here, we use social media data in the United States from 2012 to 2022 to assess public perceptions of pollen seasons at large spatiotemporal scales. We show that pollen seasons detected by social media (Twitter) users align well with natural pollen seasons. Attribution of changing pollen seasons, however, varies based on political ideology: liberal users, compared to conservative users, are more likely to attribute changing pollen seasons to climate change. Mass media and scientific experts play a key role in communicating how climate change drives changing pollen seasons. Our findings reveal how changes in biological systems, political ideology, and scientific communications collectively shape public perceptions of pollen seasons under climate change. Our findings constitute a step towards more effective climate change impact communication and public health intervention design.

scientific communication and education↗