What does the public talk about climate change, climate-health stressors, and citizen science? &#160;
Authors: Kalas Milan , Ommer Joy , Sabbatini Tommaso , Kolokol Denis , Vranic Sasa 
Published: February 2023

&lt;p&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;Social media is increasingly scraped to extract &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span xml:lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; data-contrast=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;informatio&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;n&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt; on &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span xml:lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; data-contrast=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;various&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt; topics.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span xml:lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; data-contrast=&quot;auto&quot;&gt; &lt;span&gt;Within &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;EU-funded&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span&gt;projects&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span&gt;text mining&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span&gt;is being&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; applied&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; to gain insights into public perceptions on climate change, citizen science activities, and on the relationship between climate, health, and ecosystems. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;For this purpose, n&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;atural language processing tools&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; were used&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; to automatically pre-process, clean&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; and extract meaningful segments from the text posted on social networks. The proposed text mining tools are building on the open-source pre-training method for natural language understanding (BERT) and use language models pre-trained on large amount of generic and domain specific text&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;s&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;With this &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;method&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; domain-specific meaningful phrases, named entities (places, organizations, etc.), &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;and &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;overall post sentiment&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; are extracted to &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;gain an understanding of the public perceptions&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;: in&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span&gt;the H2020 &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;I-CHANGE&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; project&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;we &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;a&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;nalyzed&lt;/span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;posts from Twitter to gain an understanding of current trends around climate change and citizen science but also to summarize people&amp;#8217;s perceptions of risks derived from climate change and hydrometeorological hazards.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span xml:lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; data-contrast=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt; While in &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;HEA&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span&gt;TRIGGER&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; project&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;text mining &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;is&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt; used to detect and assess the human perception of health impacts from climate stressors&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span xml:lang=&quot;EN-US&quot; data-contrast=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;