How Governments Communicate Climate Change on Short Video Platforms: Tiktok and Douyin

Social media platforms like TikTok and Douyin have transformed how governments worldwide communicate climate change. This research examines over 2 million videos from 300,000 government and political accounts across 221 countries, collected between June 2023 and February 2024. Through fine-tuning a large language model, we filter out environmentally related videos from massive data and categorize them into science communication, policy communication, social activism, and other subcategories. Preliminary findings reveal that 213 governments engage in climate discussions on these platforms, with significant variation in intensity. The United States leads in climate communication, often driven by domestic emergencies rather than international cooperation. Interestingly, our current analysis shows that neither economic development nor political system influences government engagement on climate change, as evidenced by active participation from developing countries like Pakistan, Turkey, and Nigeria. These insights challenge traditional views of climate communication and highlight the complex factors influencing governmental discourse on social media.