Unraveling YouTube Stances on Global Warming: An In-Depth Analysis of Skeptics and Believers

With the escalating concerns surrounding global warming, understanding public sentiment and stance becomes pivotal, particularly on influential platforms like YouTube. This paper introduces a cutting-edge approach to detect stances from YouTube comments related to global warming into three categories: skeptics, believers, and neutrals. Simultaneously, we present a novel dataset in the climate change domain labeled by our pre-trained model, comprising labeled YouTube comments. Contrasting with existing works that majorly prioritize sentiment or stance detection accuracy, our paper emphasizes a broader understanding of the digital climate discourse, unearthing behavioral nuances and interaction patterns on social media platforms. Our analysis unravels the interaction dynamics between believers and skeptics. It involves believers in refuting or countering skeptic viewpoints, showcasing a dynamic interplay between these groups. Furthermore, despite skeptics being in the minority, certain key skeptic voices wielded substantial influence, echoing profoundly within the community and receiving notable engagement. The findings underscore the importance of considering both vocal and passive engagements in shaping the climate change narrative online. This comprehensive approach not only illuminates the intricacies of online climate discourse but also offers valuable insights for strategizing climate change communication, guiding policy decisions, and setting directions for subsequent research in environmental sentiment analysis.