Musk’s Twitter takeover sparks mass exodus of climate experts

Around half of the Twitter users who actively posted about climate and environmental issues have left the social media platform since Elon Musk took over, new research has found, raising concerns over the ‘troubling implications’ of this mass exodus. The research, published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution on Tuesday, says that nearly half of Twitter users who identified as environmentally oriented had ceased being active on the platform. The authors of the study analysed the sample of 380,000 users who tweeted about climate and environment at least once in 15 days. The study found that within six months of take over by Mr Musk, around 47.5 per cent of these users became inactive. For comparison, the researchers also looked at a control group of 458,000 users who tweeted about US politics, and found that only 21 per cent of these users became inactive in the same period. The research took place between December 2022 and May 2023 and was led by Charlotte Chang, assistant professor of biology and environmental analysis at Pomona College. Researchers say this mass exodus shows the changes in Twitter’s ownership and how the platform is run has real-world impact. ‘Twitter has been the dominant social media platform for diverse environmental interests to communicate and organise around advocacy goals, exchange ideas and research and new opportunities for collaboration,’ the authors wrote. ‘Currently there is nothing on the horizon to replace it, putting at risk robust idea-sharing on topics such as extreme weather disaster responses, preservation of biodiversity and climate change.’ The social media giant, now called ‘X’, has gone through a series of shake-ups and changes since the Tesla founder bought the platform in October 2022. However, the platform has long stood as a vital source for real-time information and public mobilisation. Recent findings suggest that hate speech has increased substantially after the Twitter sale and that engagement increased much more markedly for contentious right-wing actors, the study notes. Researchers say changes since Twitter’s acquisition likely have ripple effects for other user segments as well, such as the climate policy sphere, or future disaster response after extreme weather events.