Holistic approach to analysing debates on ecological sustainability over time on X

Abstract Using network theory and data analysis, we study the messages on Twitter (X) about ecological sustainability over the period 2007-2022. With a global view of 70,311,541 messages we examined the sentiment, keywords and hashtags utilised, as well as the correlations between sentiment and both socioeconomic and environmental variables. In addition to the above, we carried out an in-depth analysis of the global interactions network (retweets, replies and quotes), with a special focus on the study of the community network (CNET) (with 4576 supernodes, and 9855 links). The sentiment shown in the text of the tweets was positive over the years in all analysed locations, although close to neutral. Keyword analysis detected terms present in tweets posted from various regions, showing global thinking in the world. The relationships between sentiment and variables examined were continent- and country-specific, identifying a stronger correlation with socioeconomic attributes. Regarding CNET, according to the study performed using adjacency and laplacian embeddings, as well as Chebyshev, Euclidean, Minkowski, and Manhattan distances, pairs of unconnected supernodes appeared to have more similarity in their connection patterns than pairs of connected supernodes, due to the topological structure of CNET which has a large number of peripheral nodes that are not connected to each other, but are connected to nodes with higher centrality. In agreement with the Jaccard coefficient, resource allocation index, Adamic Adar index, and preferential attachment score, there is little possibility of link formation between supernodes. Statistically the supernodes also exhibited high topological similarity. A few specific supernodes host most of the users, showing the highest centralities among those analysed. The basic structure of CNET, which maintained its key properties, was also examined. Strategies that promote communication between supernodes to achieve greater participation and diversity in discussions need to be further investigated.