Understanding Environmental Posts: Sentiment and Emotion Analysis of
  Social Media Data
Daniyar Amangeldi Aida Usmanova Pakizar Shamoi
Social media is now the predominant source of information due to the
availability of immediate public response. As a result, social media data has
become a valuable resource for comprehending public sentiments. Studies have
shown that it can amplify ideas and influence public sentiments. This study
analyzes the public perception of climate change and the environment over a
decade from 2014 to 2023. Using the Pointwise Mutual Information (PMI)
algorithm, we identify sentiment and explore prevailing emotions expressed
within environmental tweets across various social media platforms, namely
Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube. Accuracy on a human-annotated dataset was 0.65,
higher than Vader score but lower than that of an expert rater (0.90). Our
findings suggest that negative environmental tweets are far more common than
positive or neutral ones. Climate change, air quality, emissions, plastic, and
recycling are the most discussed topics on all social media platforms,
highlighting its huge global concern. The most common emotions in environmental
tweets are fear, trust, and anticipation, demonstrating public reactions wide
and complex nature. By identifying patterns and trends in opinions related to
the environment, we hope to provide insights that can help raise awareness
regarding environmental issues, inform the development of interventions, and
adapt further actions to meet environmental challenges.