Exploring Iranian sentiments on the Paris Agreement: Insights from Twitter

Iran remains one of the few nations not fully committed to the Paris Agreement and public opinion regarding implementation of policies serves a significant role. This study examines the general sentiment of Iranian Twitter users towards the Paris Agreement. A total of 25,386 tweets were collected and analyzed, revealing that discussions around the Paris Agreement predominantly centred on terms such as 'electricity', 'shameful', 'government', and 'America'. The majority of these tweets coincided with the power outages in January, June, and July 2021, as well as the period following Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in June 2017. To gain deeper insights into the level of support for the Paris Agreement in Iran, a thematic analysis was conducted on a random sample of 500 tweets, selected based on the theoretical saturation of themes and sub-themes. The analysis revealed that 8 % of users expressed a positive orientation, 60 % a negative orientation, and 32 % a neutral orientation towards the Paris Agreement. The thematic analysis suggests that the negative sentiment is primarily due to frequent power outages, perceived inefficiency and lack of trust in government decisions, lack of transparency, and the perceived colonial nature of the agreement for developing countries. The findings underscore the importance of garnering public support in developing countries for international environmental agreements.