Excited to share our new preprint: "Incivility and Contentiousness Spillover between COVID-19 and Climate Science Engagement." We examine how affective polarisation surrounding COVID spilled over into climate change discussions on Twitter and Reddit in 2019-2021. @tedhchen.com @hastinz.bsky.social

By analysing millions of climate change and climate science posts, we found that mentions of COVID-19 or Anthony Fauci derailed climate conversation into incivility and contentiousness. These patterns strengthened during major pandemic events.

These findings highlight a "cross-domain spillover": political flashpoints in one science-related issue (e.g., vaccine hesitancy) can fuel hostility in another (e.g., climate policy). In other words, polarised behaviours are not confined to a single topic—they can spread.

We also show that pre-existing political cleavages—anti-internationalist populist sentiments—provide a pathway for this spillover, helping link climate skepticism to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. This overlap further entrenches anti-science sentiment across different policy domains.