From Flight Shame to Flight Governance: How Climate-Linked Digital Discourse Reveals Pathways for Aviation Commons

Grounded in commons theory and Ostrom’s institutional analysis framework, this study examines how climate-linked digital discourse frames aviation’s role in degrading the atmospheric commons, with Reddit serving as the empirical setting. The study used a qualitatively driven, computationally assisted design based on 3,756 cleaned Reddit comments collected from climate-linked discussions between January 2023 and January 2026. Within this sampled corpus, thematic analysis identifies four recurrent patterns: (1) Frequent flyers capture the atmospheric commons , (2) Air travel stays normalised despite rising commons awareness , (3) High-speed rail and ground modes offer commons-compatible substitutes and (4) Technological fixes face energy and feasibility limits in aviation . Model-based sentiment and emotion analysis, validated against manual audits, shows a largely negative profile marked by uncertainty, disgust and anger, especially around unequal use, weak accountability and unverifiable claims. The study develops a three-layer framework linking climate-linked digital discourse, proposed governance responses and material substitution pathways.