Matt Shapiro publishes new paper in Environmental Communications

As the third most visited website in the world, YouTube receives more than four billion video views each day.  In addition to the high amount of web traffic, the comment sections of these videos provide a venue for ongoing discussions among engaged viewers about the video content.

Matt Shapiro, associate professor of political science in the Department of Social Sciences, recently published a paper examining the climate change discourse in a sample of the most popular climate change-related videos to understand how the comments can impact one’s interpretation of the original video content.  The paper, “Climate change and YouTube: Deliberation Potential in Post-video Discussion,” was published the journal Environmental Communication.