Greta Thunberg Speeches: Content analysis and its impact on YouTube

Abstract

This paper analyzes the positive space-time correlation between the fourteen speeches of Greta Thunberg and climate change milestones during September 2018-September 2019. The trigger event was the launch of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in October 2018, where it presented that the new objective of temperature increase for this century is 1.5 °C and not 2 °C as agreed at the Paris meeting in 2015. The approach of the speeches is mainly scientific, presenting simple arguments and aligned with the latest i pcc report, secondly, the approach is social and thirdly, political, followed by the economic approach. An emotional content analysis is performed based on Krippendorff methodology by utilizing a specialized software. Three Greta speeches were selected based on the highest number of YouTube visits. The main findings are: there is a positive correlation between negative tone of the speeches with 1) the number of visitors to the various YouTube channels where the speech is transmitted; 2) the participation of users with “like” or “dislike”; 3) increases the proportion of “dislikes”. Hence, the more apocalyptic the speech, the more visitors it has, and the more “dislikes” in YouTube.