As the international bureaucracy at the heart of the global climate regime, the UN climate change secretariat has become a prominent actor during the annual Conferences of the Parties (COPs). Scholars assessed the secretariat’s evolution from a rather passive bureaucracy to an actor in its own right. One aspect of the UN climate change secretariat that has gained little attention, although it potentially offers new insights into its strategies to influence global climate politics, is its use of online social networks (OSN). The secretariat has become an active user of OSN, such as Twitter to promote its work, engage other stakeholders, and highlight climate initiatives. Whereas scholars pointed out the secretariat’s centrality in online debates within different policy issues, there is no systematic and longitudinal analysis of the bureaucracy’s online interaction with various groups of stakeholders. This paper aims at closing this research gap by analysing the Twitter network of the UN climate change secretariat over a period of nine years (2009 to 2017). The research question guiding this paper is how and why did the online social interaction of the UN climate change secretariat change over time? Preliminary results show that the secretariat`s interaction patterns have changed over the years. Especially its interactions with business actors have increased drastically after the 2015 COP in Paris, providing these actors and their climate actions with increasing visibility online. These results lead to the suggestion that the UN climate change secretariat adjusts its engagement in online social networks in accordance to global climate politics.
