Social Media Analysis on ASEAN Energy Transition Trends

Abstract

This study examines how controversies of the energy transition and climate change in the Southeast Asia region were portrayed in public perspectives using big data from the social media platform. This novel data source can then support mapping the emergence and predicting the acceptance of energy transition, which leads to the following research question, “How can social media inform social controversy and expectations associated with the energy-climate nexus in ASEAN?” As a case study, this paper will be limited to focusing on the ASEAN energy transition and climate change discussion on the Twitter platform between January 2015 and December 2020. This case has been selected for a number of reasons: (i) Climate change is a complex interdisciplinary issue that has gained much global attention recently, (ii) Energy transition is considered an important action by the ASEAN Member States to enhance the regional energy security and sustainability as stated in the ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation blueprint, and (iii) Twitter is one of the world’s most popular social media platforms. The study relies on two theoretical frameworks as the base for building its research problem: socio-technical transition multi-level perspective and social construction of technology. A multi-quantitative method was performed for data collection and data processing. The data was analysed using descriptive trend analysis, sentiment analysis, and co-word analysis.