From Local Knowledge to Digital Advocacy: A Mixed Network Analysis of Climate Change Communication Pathways in Tanzania

Abstract

This study investigates how climate change knowledge moves between local communities, institutions, and digital platforms in Tanzania, where smallholder farmers, pastoralists, and coastal communities continue to draw on indigenous knowledge even as government agencies and civil society increasingly channel climate information through digital and broadcast media. Using a mixed network analysis  combining qualitative thematic coding with graph-theoretic mapping  the study synthesises 25 peer-reviewed studies published between 2023 and 2026 to model the communication pathways connecting eight categories of actors: local knowledge holders, local government authorities, national government and policy institutions, digital and social media, community radio, non-governmental and advocacy networks, academic and research institutions, and international donors. The resulting network indicates that local knowledge holders and local government authorities occupy the most central positions, while digital and social media function as an increasingly important bridge between local-level knowledge and national policy and advocacy discourse. The findings suggest that climate communication in Tanzania is shifting from a primarily oral, locally bounded system toward a hybrid.