We are all in big trouble Shock Emoji Personal Narratives in Expressing Emotions Opinions and Data Regarding Climate Change in TikTok Short Videos

Jul 16, 2026

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Climate change fuels anxiety about the future, and effective communication depends on how people express emotions, opinions, and information online. A study of 200 TikTok videos tagged #climatechange identifies four content categories: expression of feelings, views and appeals, news and information, and trend hijacking. Creators package critiques with humor, shift from complex claims to personal life stories, and adapt news fragments into narratives that signal scientific credibility while balancing accuracy and emotion. Audience reactions show empathetic engagement that can strengthen communities while also reinforcing existing views.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages44

Reading Time1 h 51 min

Introduction

Climate communication challenges

Research gap in social media

Study focus and theoretical basis

Dataset and sampling

arXiv :2607 . 11803v1 [ cs .HC] 13 Jul 2026 “We are all in big trouble! *Shock Emoji”: Personal Narrativesin Expressing Emotions, Opinions, and Data Regarding Climate Change in TikTok Short Videos CHU ZHANG, Guangdong University of Technology, China SIMAI HUANG, City University of Hong Kong, China SHAOHUA WU, The University of Hong Kong, China YIHUAN CHEN, City University of Hong Kong, China RAY LC∗ , City University of Hong Kong Studio for Narrative Spaces, China Climate change is a source of anxiety about the future. Understanding how people express themselves about climate change enables us to address such concerns. To study climate change expression on social media, we analyzed 200 TikTok videos tagged with \#climatechange, identifying four categories of content: expressionfeelings, views-appeals, news-information, and trend-hijacking. We found that creators use humor to package sharp critiques, avoiding direct confrontation. They replace complex discussions with life stories, such as adopting a vegetarian lifestyle or deleting emails. They borrow from news media to present fragmented information as scientific interpretations, creating a perception of scientific credibility, balancing scientific accuracy with emotionality. Analysis of viewer responses showed they engaged empathetically, reshaping interpretations of videos. These interactions risk reinforcing existing views but help build community on TikTok, which lacks community structure. This study reveals how creators may retell news on science using personal narratives, highlighting how short-form videos enable climate communication. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing. Additional Key Words and Phrases: Climate Change, Social Media, Content Creators, Video Content, Tiktok ACM Reference Format: Chu Zhang, Simai Huang, Shaohua Wu, Yihuan Chen, and RAY LC. 2026.“We are all in big trouble! *Shock Emoji”: Personal Narratives in Expressing Emotions, Opinions, and Data Regarding Climate Change in TikTok Short Videos. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 10, 6, Article CSCW186 (October 2026), 44 pages. [https://doi.org/10.1145/3817034](https://doi.org/10.1145/3817034) 1 Introduction In climate communication, awareness is easy, but action is hard. Translating awareness of the climate crisis into effective policy and public action is difficult, because people often do not envision the longterm consequences of climate destruction [81]. Research highlights challenges in communicating ∗Correspondences can be [addressed to ray.lc@cityu.edu.hk](addressed to ray.lc@cityu.edu.hk). com, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, - Authors’ Contact Information: Chu Zhang, zhangchu0908@outlook. China; Simai Huang, [huangstella0124@gmail.com](huangstella0124@gmail.com), City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China; Shaohua Wu, [ShaohuaWu26@outlook.com](ShaohuaWu26@outlook.com), The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China; Yihuan Chen, yihuachen6 [c@my.cityu.edu.hk](c@my.cityu.edu.hk), City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China; RAY LC, [ray.lc@cityu.edu.hk](ray.lc@cityu.edu.hk), City University of Hong Kong Studio for Narrative Spaces, Hong Kong, SAR, China. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4 .0 International License. © 2026 Copyright held by the owner/author(s) . ACM 2573-0142/2026/10-ARTCSCW186 [https://doi.org/10.1145/3817034](https://doi.org/10.1145/3817034) Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., Vol. 10, No. 6, Article CSCW186 . Publication date: October 2026 . CSCW186:2 Zhang, et al. climate change to the public, revealing a gap in understanding of how to effectively raise awareness and emotionally engage the audience in addressing the climate crisis [57, 99] . Effective climate communication requires collaboration and coordination among all parties to ensure that diverse perspectives and concerns are add

FAQs

How many TikTok videos were analyzed, and how were they selected?

The study analyzed 200 TikTok videos tagged with #climatechange, randomly selected from 3,086 videos collected over the past five years.

What four categories of climate change content were identified on TikTok?

The analysis identified four categories: expression/feelings, views/appeals, news/information, and trend-hijacking.

What communication strategies do creators use to express climate-related opinions and data?

Creators use humor to frame critiques, substitute complex discussion with personal narratives, and draw on news media fragments to present information as scientific interpretations with perceived credibility.

Jul 16, 2026

Upload by Ophelia