In this study, I examine how an online cryptocurrency community discusses the issue of climate change. In particular, I examine distinctive themes present within discussions that occur on the r/CryptoCurrency forum hosted by reddit.com. Existing research has demonstrated that there are significant carbon emissions linked to cryptocurrency. However, cryptocurrency primarily exists as a peer-to-peer system, meaning that the individual perceptions of cryptocurrency adopters may provide insight into how to address the emissions problem. Using latent Dirichlet allocation and publicly available textual data from Reddit, I find that Reddit's cryptocurrency community engages in robust discussions pertaining to the energy needed to power cryptocurrency systems, most of which is generated from fossil fuels. Therefore, the discussions identified in this study suggest that the social aspect of cryptocurrency may be important when examining the links between cryptocurrency and climate change since they help identify what subjects related to climate change are important for this community.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc2137529 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Brickell, Miles |
| Contributors | Ignatow, Gabe, McCaffree, Kevin, Scarborough, William J. |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | Text |
| Rights | Public, Brickell, Miles, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved. |
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