U.N. Monitoring Twitter for Our Sentiment on Climate Change

In the advent of a big international summit on climate change and other environmental issues, the U.N. is trying to keep up with the latest news — and how people online feel about it. The organization’s big data tool tracks mentions of various environment-related topics and aggregates the data on a map, letting anyone see what people are talking about and where. Spike in agriculture tweets in Spain? Zoom in and find out who’s talking and why. Rising sea levels in the news? See whether coastal areas are more likely to retweet or show concern. You can test the tool out here yourself, or read a little more about how it works at the U.N. blog post announcing it. The U.N. Climate Summit is coming up next week, and should furnish academics and politicians an opportunity to discuss issues and propose solutions.