{
  "abstract": "Affective polarization and political sorting drive public antagonism around climate change and other issues at the science-policy nexus. We study cross-domain spillover of incivility in public engagements with climate change and public health on English language Twitter and Reddit using the COVID-19 period as a case study. To assess whether spillover exists between these two policy domains, we examined how the incivility of climate discussions on social media varied by their co-occurrence with COVID-19 content and temporal coincidence with pandemic events. We find strong evidence of the signatures of affective polarization surrounding COVID-19 spilling into the climate change domain. Across different social media systems, COVID-19 content is associated with incivility in climate discussions. These patterns of increased antagonism were responsive to pandemic events that made the link between science and public policy more salient. We also looked at how climate discussions about international organizations and elites changed with the pandemic's onset to show that the observed incivility spillover activated along overlapping pre-pandemic political cleavages, specifically anti-internationalist populist beliefs that linked climate policy opposition to vaccine hesitancy. Our findings show how affective polarization in public engagement with science becomes entrenched across policy domains, which has implications for how the public engages with and communicates about issues such as climate change and public health.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Aalto University",
    "RIKEN Center for Computational Science",
    "University of Helsinki",
    "George Mason University"
  ],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Hasti Narimanzadeh"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Arash Badie-Modiri"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2
      ],
      "name": "Iuliia Smirnova",
      "orcid": "0009-0001-0801-7718"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3
      ],
      "name": "Ted Hsuan Yun Chen",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-3279-8710"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0cj9rq3qs3wsb.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.1088/1748-9326/aeb682",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "0cj9rq3qs3wsb",
  "issns": [
    "1748-9326"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aeb682",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "feed-journal",
      "earth/environmental-science"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3312|Climate Change Communication and Perception"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7223055003",
  "pdf_url": "https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aeb682/pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-20",
  "publisher": "IOP Publishing",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0cj9rq3qs3wsb.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:20:55Z",
      "native_id": "10.1088/1748-9326/aeb682",
      "source": "crossref",
      "url": "https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aeb682"
    },
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-03T18:20:10Z",
      "native_id": "10.1088/1748-9326/aeb682",
      "source": "feed-iop",
      "url": "https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aeb682"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "earth",
      "origin": "feed-journal:earth/environmental-science",
      "subfield": "environmental-science"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Incivility in Public Health Policy Discussions Spills Over to Public Engagement with Climate Issues: Evidence from English Language Social Media",
  "title_text": "Incivility in Public Health Policy Discussions Spills Over to Public Engagement with Climate Issues: Evidence from English Language Social Media",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-05T00:20:38Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0cj9rq3qs3wsb",
  "venue": "Environmental Research Letters",
  "versions": []
}