Climate Policy Conflicts in Policy Elites’ Social Media Debates: Evidence from Four Countries

Many policy solutions that effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions cut across multiple political dimensions and therefore create conflicts in policy processes aimed at mitigating climate change. In addition, research points increasingly to the role of social media in amplifying conflicts in policy processes. This paper investigates policy conflicts by examining the divergence of policy elites' positions toward climate policy solutions in social media debates in four countries, Finland, Sweden, Germany and Ireland. I examine how policy solutions’ interrelation with different political dimensions is associated with low and high conflict levels, and how conflict drivers vary across issue and country contexts. I ask: i) Which climate policy solutions generate conflict in social media debates? ii) How does the level of conflict vary by solution and country context? The theoretical framework uses Weible & Heikkila’s (2017) Policy Conflict Framework (PCF), which posits that the level of policy conflict is integral to the formation of policy outcomes. Unlike other policy process theories, such as the Advocacy Coalition Framework, which recognize conflict as important but only study it indirectly or as a background concept, the PCF allows conflict to be placed at the center of policy process analysis. The empirical approach applies word embedding methods to data collected from Twitter (now known as X) by organizations involved in climate policy processes across four countries in the years 2017-2022. Word embeddings allow to identify differences in how policy actors discuss different policy solutions, thus revealing divergent views that can quantify the extent of conflict or congruence over the policy solution. The article hypothesizes that actors tend to have similar views on ‘green growth’ policy solutions related to the economic policy dimension, such as the construction of wind power plants, possibly indicating a lower level of conflict. Policies that interfere with the national political economy or with individual lifestyle choices, such as decreasing logging in Finland or increasing plant-based food production, are hypothesized to raise more divergent views and thus be associated with higher levels of conflict. This is because they also intersect with other political dimensions, such as those related to the rural-urban divide and individual identities. The results add to the literature on conflicts in policy processes by examining how differences in policy positions expressed in social media debates can distinguish characteristics associated with high and low levels of policy conflict. In doing so, the paper contributes to knowledge on the political feasibility of climate change mitigation measures and the role of policy conflicts in policymaking processes. I wish the paper to be considered in the panel Advocacy Coalitions, Conflicts, and Policy Change.