PPE postdoc Pei-Hsun Hsieh has published new research in the Journal of Environmental Psychology titled “Finite Pool of Worry and Emotions in Climate Change Tweets During COVID-19.” The study examines how the COVID-19 pandemic shaped public concern about climate change. Scholars have debated whether the pandemic merely diverted attention from climate issues or also reduced people’s level of worry about them.

Drawing on nearly 24 million climate-related tweets from 2018–2022, Hsieh and colleagues analyzed emotional content using multiple linguistic tools. They found that as COVID-19 severity increased, climate-related tweets declined—not only in frequency but also in expressions of fear, anxiety, and other negative emotions. These effects were strongest in 2020, when the pandemic was most widely perceived as an acute existential threat.

The paper is available through the Penn Library here.