Tweeting Hydrogen: An Exploratory Study of Australian Twitter Communications about Hydrogen Decarbonisation
Creators: name: Novak, Mikayla
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2024

description: Over recent years there has been growing interest in the potential for hydrogen development as an innovative pathway to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions. This interest is not only reflected in the involvement of a multiplicity of actors from commercial, policy, and research communities in the nascent hydrogen innovation space. There has been an increase in online discussions wherein participants not only share information and news about hydrogen projects but disseminate their beliefs, opinions, and values regarding the merits of hydrogen-based decarbonisation. These intuitions give rise to the proposition that hydrogen decarbonisation is a process involving multilayered network interactions - including, but not limited to, engagements by actors within communication networks using online platforms. This thesis is guided by an underlying research question: how can entangled innovation around hydrogen decarbonisation be understood through network and sentiment analyses of discussions through Twitter? To speak of a notion of "entangled innovation" is to refer to a novel conceptual framework that describes how an array of participants in the innovation process forge significant, if not enduring, connections with one another. The purpose of those connections is not only to exchange material resources (through private and public sector activities), but to engage in social interactions over the meanings and significance of innovation - in this context, decarbonisation innovation involving the development of hydrogen proposals to supplant carbon-intensive energy, transport, and other systems. It is supposed in this thesis that online communication represents one of many dimensions of network connectivity between parties to innovation, and interested stakeholders and constituencies. The entangled innovation conceptual framework sets the scene for the prosecution of an empirical strategy of identifying the network character of hydrogen discussions on the Twitter social media platform. Three dimensions of the hydrogen network are analysed. First, the connections between actors identified as participating in Twitter discussions are quantified using an array of structural network statistical measures. This is followed by the use of semantic network analysis to appraise the framed structures of conversation through which the actors contest statements and generate discursive meanings. Finally, the sentiments conveyed by users in the Twitter hydrogen decarbonisation network are subject to empirical appraisal. Using the VOSON R software for collecting and constructing networks from social media data, this thesis provides for a large-scale data collection covering twelve months of hydrogen decarbonisation conversations on Twitter involving around 200 key Australian advocacy, commercial, political, and scientific actors. The data collection pertains to the 2021 calendar year. This was a significant period wherein numerous Australian hydrogen development projects were announced, and national and international decarbonisation policy settings were negotiated (including at the UN COP26 conference). The network analysis reveals a clustered topology of Twitter interactions on hydrogen topics, and with a high degree of entanglement between different categories of conversing actors. Semantic network analysis identified frames relating to issues such as economic development and the innovative underpinnings of hydrogen decarbonisation. Sentiment analysis of discussions in the network are also examined, revealing emotional polarities in respect to discussions conveyed about hydrogen innovation potentials. This study illustrates the significance of social media in structuring communication networks on innovation, and illuminates the value of Twitter as a digital platform for understanding community attitudes to structural transformations such as hydrogen decarbonisation.