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Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment
As the consequences of anthropogenic climate change become more apparent, social media has become a central tool for environmental activists to raise awareness and to mobilize society. In two studies, we examine how the emotional framing of messages posted by environmental activists influences engag...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9928158/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36798643 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1099331 |
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author | Sanford, Mary Witkowska, Marta Gifford, Robert Formanowicz, Magda |
author_facet | Sanford, Mary Witkowska, Marta Gifford, Robert Formanowicz, Magda |
author_sort | Sanford, Mary |
collection | PubMed |
description | As the consequences of anthropogenic climate change become more apparent, social media has become a central tool for environmental activists to raise awareness and to mobilize society. In two studies, we examine how the emotional framing of messages posted by environmental activists influences engagement and behavioral intentions toward environmental action. In the first study, tweets (N = 510k) of 50 environmental activists posted between November 2015 and December 2020 are examined to measure their emotional content and its relation to tweet diffusion. Environment-related tweets are found to be shared more the less they contain positive emotion and the more they contain negative emotion. This result supports the negativity bias on social media. In Study 2 (N = 200), we experimentally test whether negatively vs. positively framed environmental content leads to increased reported intent to engage with collective action, and whether mood mediates that link. We find both direct and indirect effects on reported climate action intentions when mood is used as a mediator. The negative mood resulting from seeing negative tweets makes participants more likely to report higher action intention (indirect effect)—congruent with Study 1. However, seeing negative tweets also makes participants less inclined to act (direct effect), indicating a suppression effect and the presence of other factors at work on the pathway between information and action intent formation. This work highlights the complex and multifaceted nature of this relation and motivates more experimental work to identify other relevant factors, as well as how they relate to one another. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9928158 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99281582023-02-15 Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment Sanford, Mary Witkowska, Marta Gifford, Robert Formanowicz, Magda Front Psychol Psychology As the consequences of anthropogenic climate change become more apparent, social media has become a central tool for environmental activists to raise awareness and to mobilize society. In two studies, we examine how the emotional framing of messages posted by environmental activists influences engagement and behavioral intentions toward environmental action. In the first study, tweets (N = 510k) of 50 environmental activists posted between November 2015 and December 2020 are examined to measure their emotional content and its relation to tweet diffusion. Environment-related tweets are found to be shared more the less they contain positive emotion and the more they contain negative emotion. This result supports the negativity bias on social media. In Study 2 (N = 200), we experimentally test whether negatively vs. positively framed environmental content leads to increased reported intent to engage with collective action, and whether mood mediates that link. We find both direct and indirect effects on reported climate action intentions when mood is used as a mediator. The negative mood resulting from seeing negative tweets makes participants more likely to report higher action intention (indirect effect)—congruent with Study 1. However, seeing negative tweets also makes participants less inclined to act (direct effect), indicating a suppression effect and the presence of other factors at work on the pathway between information and action intent formation. This work highlights the complex and multifaceted nature of this relation and motivates more experimental work to identify other relevant factors, as well as how they relate to one another. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-01-30 /pmc/articles/PMC9928158/ /pubmed/36798643 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1099331 Text en Copyright © 2023 Sanford, Witkowska, Gifford and Formanowicz. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Sanford, Mary Witkowska, Marta Gifford, Robert Formanowicz, Magda Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment |
title | Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment |
title_full | Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment |
title_fullStr | Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment |
title_full_unstemmed | Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment |
title_short | Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment |
title_sort | emotional framing in online environmental activism: pairing a twitter study with an offline experiment |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9928158/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36798643 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1099331 |
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