Las social networksespecially Instagramhave become a powerful tool in the hands of ecoinfluencers and the environmental activismhe environment It is a topic that is of interest due to the growing social conscience about the matter.
Now a research group led by experts from the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) has analyzed the emerging visual narratives to raise awareness about environmental and climate challenges on Instagram.
«The objective of this work is to define and find these distinctive features from a communication point of view of profiles and accounts of Instagram dedicated to communicating this type of problem”, explains Gemma San Cornelio, researcher of the MEDIACCIONS group, of the Information and Communication Sciences Studies of the UOC, and one of the main authors of this work, jointly with Elisenda Ardèvol, professor of Arts and Humanities Studies at the UOC, and Sandra Martorell, researcher at the Department of Audiovisual Communication, Documentation and History of Art at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
Specifically, new ways of communicating issues related to climate change, the climate crisis in general, the different ways of communicating these contents and the way to achieve greater reach and involvement on the part of the audience have been dissected. All this, through a qualitative methodological approach in sixty Instagram accountswith about three hundred publications and interviews to user profiles.
«This form of communication is different from other previous forms of environmental communication that had been directed by the mass media, such as traditional media or even digital media led by corporations and media institutions. These messages are led by users and their followerswhich is very important, depending on the size of the community they want to reach and convince of these environmental issuesby involving them in the process of change, in which they take part and take action,” emphasizes the expert.
Ecoinfluencers: new communication models and their narratives
Regarding the new communication models and their narratives, The messages that have the greatest impact on social networks are those that seek a positive tone, which place their emphasis on finding elements that provoke positive emotionality. For example, those publications of Instagram that show images of different environments that excite you when connecting with nature.
On the other hand, another characteristic that these messages have is that They tend to encourage action, evoking motivation regarding an environmental problem. specifically from a personal point of view. In this way, they try differentiate from traditional catastrophic or negative images to avoid creating feelings of guilt in their community while inviting them to mobilize in a positive sense.
These are common traits shown in publications, whether in the use of images, first-person accounts, achievements, memes, humorous content or other elements of culture intended to promote the environmental cause.
«This emerging visual narrative is purposeful. It proposes that you do things as an individual. From a more activism point of viewperhaps it is more questioned, because they do not focus on fighting or making requests to institutions and governments, but more on individual change, on something that you can do for yourself, which is not incompatible with asking for these structural changes,” explains Saint Cornelius.
However, it must be taken into account that this type of communication models usually have a certain intrinsic connection to the lifestyle or daily life of these profiles. ecoinfluencersaimed at reducing their impact on the world and creating a positive footprint by personalizing climate action.
«Through this strategy, you can reach a larger number of people on the networks and build people’s loyalty who make up the community around these profiles thanks to the fact that they usually have very committed accounts, who inform themselves and provide official data,” adds the UOC researcher.
These general behaviors in these user profiles do not have to occur in other social networks. «These particularities cannot necessarily be extrapolated to other platforms, since Instagram “It has an audience with a different behavior,” says the expert.
Ecoinfluencers: innovative approaches to environmental activism
In this way, these experts consider that to achieve a greater social impact it is essential to build narratives on climate and environmental aspects through new narratives and new media to reach beyond where scientists and legislators reach. In this sense, the profiles ecoinfluencers and environmental activists can provide another approach to address climate and environmental challenges.
Specifically, these new narratives show a cultural change in communication strategies, giving a novel approach to mobilize the public towards the environmental commitment.
«The profile ecoinfluencer environmental activist on Instagram has very clear objectives, which are raise awareness about the environmental cause, inform, educate and also reach the maximum number of people possible, as I said before, so that they feel capable of doing minimally something. The idea that doing a little is important and that many people doing a little bit of their part is important, well, it is also part of its narrative and its objectives,” concludes the author.
This article is part of a series of works, funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, that this group of researchers has carried out in recent years, focused on different characteristics of the environmental activism in digital mediaespecially Instagramincluded in a broader research project on narrative cultures, social action and their relationship with the public in contemporary society.