Maxime Pelissier

What shapes public debate on climate change? This project will examine how various natural and political events influence climate change narratives. Focusing on France from 2014 to 2024, we will analyze the impact of natural hazards and ecological protests on climate-related views expressed across social media, traditional media, opinion surveys, and political speeches. By incorporating multiple events into our analysis, we aim to understand the dynamics and cumulative effects shaping public beliefs: after protests, do the narratives (of both sides: activists and their opponents) mobilize the previous natural hazards? Moreover, unlike previous studies, we will pay particular attention to the potential heterogeneity in rhetoric and narrative as a function of individual characteristics and in particular, their geographic location. This will help us understand the potential source of polarization in political speeches, and to question the geographical cleavage now emphasized in the French political science literature.