Analysing social media climate change discourses by coastal destinations

Authors

  • Assumpció Huertas Departament d’Estudis de Comunicació, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. Email: sunsi.huertas@urv.cat
  • Antonio Moreno Intelligent Technologies for Advanced Knowledge Acquisition research group (ITAKA) Engineering School (ETSE), Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. Email: antonio.moreno@urv.cat https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3945-2314
  • Benito Zaragozí Department of Geography. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Catalonia, Spain. Email: benito.zaragozi@urv.cat https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2501-484X
  • Raquel Santos-Lacueva Fi Group, Barcelona, Spain. Email: rsantoslacueva@gmail.com
  • Salvador Anton Clavé Department of Geography. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Catalonia, Spain. Email: salvador.anton@urv.cat https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9818-2778

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54055/ejtr.v40i.3929

Keywords:

Climate Change Communication, Social Media Analysis, Destination Marketing Organizations, Coastal Destinations, Spain

Abstract

This study investigates social media climate change communication by Spanish coastal destinations on Twitter/X, analysing the communication themes (causes, impacts, adaptation, and mitigation) and contrasting strategies between destinations. Using a systematic methodology, tweets from January 2018 to February 2022 were collected and processed for extracting climate change-related content. The analysis highlighted a significant focus on mitigation and adaptation messages, with varying engagement levels across destinations. Results show a low volume of climate change communication in this platform and distinct communication strategies between Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO) and City Councils, reflecting different goals concerning climate change discourses. Clustering and similarity analyses helped to identify communication strategies. This research note contributes to highlight the importance of understanding social media climate change communication emphasizing the need for comprehensive engagement on these issues by coastal destinations.

Author Biographies

Antonio Moreno, Intelligent Technologies for Advanced Knowledge Acquisition research group (ITAKA) Engineering School (ETSE), Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. Email: antonio.moreno@urv.cat

Full Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Computer Science and Mathematics

Department of Univ. Rovira i Virgili. Deputy Director of URV Engineering School.

He has supervised 14 PhD thesis on different areas of Artificial Intelligence,

including ontology learning, agent-based modeling, recommender systems, clinical

decision support systems, and dynamic preference management.

Expert on the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques in the Tourism field

(including profile and preference management, recommender systems of touristic

activities, analysis of communication of DMOs through social media).

Benito Zaragozí, Department of Geography. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Catalonia, Spain. Email: benito.zaragozi@urv.cat

Benito Zaragozí is professor of Geography at the Department of Geography of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. He is also a member of the GRATET research group and he has made research stays in centers in the US, Italy and Spain. Dr. Zaragozí participates in international journals with a high impact index, as author and reviewer. In his studies, he addresses various geographic problems, exploring novel approaches to Geographic Information Technologies and Sciences (TIG and GIScience). These papers emphasize scientific reproducibility through the use of Free and Open Source Software, reproducible workflows, and Open Data.

Raquel Santos-Lacueva, Fi Group, Barcelona, Spain. Email: rsantoslacueva@gmail.com

Raquel Santos-Lacueva obtained her PhD in Tourism and Leisure (University Rovira i Virgili). She has a transdisciplinary profile and holds a BA in Political Science and Public Administration (University of Barcelona) and a MA in Regional and Environment Planning (University of Zaragoza). Moreover, she did research stays in Bournemouth University, Quintana Roo University, Complutense University of Madrid and in the Autonomus University of Barcelona.

She obtained different competitive awards to her research and she participated in numerous research projects founded by different institutions. She lectured in different graduate and postgraduate studies of tourism. Nowadays she combines research and consultancy. Her research focuses on sustainable tourism, policies and public action of tourism, and tourism and climate change.

Salvador Anton Clavé, Department of Geography. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Catalonia, Spain. Email: salvador.anton@urv.cat

Full Professor of Regional Geographical Analysis at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) and Principal Investigator of the Research Group on Territorial Analysis and Tourism Studies. He has served as Visitor Senior Research Scholar at the International Institute of Tourism Studies at George Washington University and he is currently the Director of Tourism Research at Eurecat-the Technology Centre of Catalonia. His major interests concentrate on the analysis of tourism destinations; attractions and theme parks development; destination planning, policies and governance; visitors spatial behavior; walkability and sustainability; and issues concerning ICT and tourism.

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Published

2025-06-07

How to Cite

Huertas, A., Moreno, A., Zaragozí, B., Santos-Lacueva, R., & Anton Clavé, S. (2025). Analysing social media climate change discourses by coastal destinations. European Journal of Tourism Research, 40, 4013. https://doi.org/10.54055/ejtr.v40i.3929

Issue

Vol. 40 (2025): European Journal of Tourism Research

Section

Research notes

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Assumpció Huertas, Antonio Moreno, Benito Zaragozí, Raquel Santos-Lacueva, Salvador Anton Clavé

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.