The Influence of Societal Climate Discourse on Governmental Climate Policy

The search for the right answers to the climate crisis has now been on the international political agenda for over four decades. During this time, governments have more or less continuously tried to meet the challenge of climate change by finding solutions to reduce emissions at the global and national level. These measures did not come out of the blue, but were the result of increasing climate awareness and the growing influence of climate movements in national societies. This is all the more true today as social media communication offers numerous opportunities through which these movements can a) attract the unfiltered attention of the general public, b) influence traditional media discourse and c) enter into direct dialogue with policy makers as they also use social media to spread their messages. This type of communication thus provides environmental groups with higher visibility, combined with better agenda-setting potential as well as better accessibility to policy-makers. The aim of this paper is to measure under which conditions this social media-based discourse translates into greater influence and political weight of the climate movement on government policy. The theory-driven empirical analysis is based on assumptions from domestic politics and issue salience research. Methodologically, it is based on the one hand on a computer-assisted content analysis of the climate discourse on Twitter and on the other hand on the reactions of government politicians on this platform and other official statements. The analysis of the climate discourse is based on the case studies of Germany and the USA.