Researching climate communication in an era of hyper-partisan split screening of reality

Social media text and video apps have become a leading news source. Using the United States in the early months of President Donald Trump's second term as a case study, this article argues there is a need for greater scholarly attention to social posting that is not tagged to climate change keywords, especially narratives from conservative and far-right sources. If climate communication researchers do not study these viewpoints and digital spaces, influential aspects to contemporary political discourse are missing from scholarly understanding of climate conversation within digital media ecosystems increasingly siloed along partisan lines. It also addresses how generative AI deepfakes can be used by social media users, intentionally or inadvertently, to spread climate disinformation during politically and socially destabilizing extreme weather disasters.