From Alarm to Bogus: Climate Migration Discourse Across German-, Spanish-, and Dutch-Language Twitter/X (2015–2023)

Abstract

This article examines how climate migration is framed on X, drawing on an initial collection of 335,221 German-, Dutch-, and Spanish-language tweets from 2015, 2019, and 2023, of which 70,110 were retained for analysis. Using BERTopic-based thematic analysis and retweet network analysis combined with qualitative framing analysis of a subsample, we show that X reproduces established victim and threat frames from legacy media while giving visibility to a distinctive bogus frame. This frame depicts climate migration as fabricated, exaggerated, or politically manipulated by elites to harm native populations. We argue that its prominence on X stems from its role as a discursive bridge between climate denialism and digital nativism. Thematic and network analyses link this frame to polarized, anti-green, climate-skeptical, and anti-migration debates, especially in German- and Dutch-language discussions. The findings demonstrate how social media reshapes climate migration discourse by amplifying conspiratorial and nativist frames.