Social media and climate journalism in the Arab context: Exploring engagement through COP28 hashtags

In light of the accelerating challenges climate change has brought to the Arab region, social media has emerged as an effective tool for stimulating public debate, supporting digital engagement and raising public awareness of climate risks. This study uses connective action theory to examine user engagement with climate change issues on social media. By analysing trending hashtags related to 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change ( COP28 ), employing social network analysis and providing qualitative insights from semi-structured interviews with Arab climate journalists, it reveals significant differences in engagement levels across social media, with some hashtags, such as #COP28, #COP28UAE and #ClimateChange, showing higher engagement and reach rates. These results confirm the Conference of the Parties ( COPs ) centrality in universal digital environmental discourse and demonstrate the importance of hashtags in focusing attention and facilitating access to conference content. The study highlights the importance of the nature, structure and presentation of content as key drivers of audience engagement with climate issues and the critical roles of climate journalists, which include simplifying complex scientific concepts and moving climate discourse from an elitist framework to one grounded in public interest. The results also highlight the challenges facing Arab climate journalism, including misinformation, scepticism about climate issues and institutional constraints that limit the depth and consistency of coverage. Overall, the study provides a new perspective on the communicative role of hashtags in promoting public engagement with climate change issues and the importance of climate journalism in addressing major environmental events.