environmental stampede twitter (now renamed X) for playing far-right. In October 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter, which until then was considered one of the social networks most involved in environmental discourse. However, the advent of kodama changed the direction of this platform, more and more propositions close to ultras and extremistsseems to scare the most progressive sectors.
Research published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution this August 15 reveals that there is a Mass exit of users with an environmental profile on this social networkA phenomenon that could have serious implications for public communication on issues such as biodiversity, climate change and recovery from natural disasters.
twitter has been the dominant social network for disclosure of environmental issues The research team that published the paper, made up of US-based biologists and environmental consultants, says they “brainstorm and pursue research.”
The team surveyed a group of 380,000 “environmentally focused users”, which includes a wide variety of people from the conservation community who are active in pro-environment debates on issues like climate change and biodiversity on Twitter. Users were considered “active” when they posted on the platform at least once in a 15-day period.
Lose 48% of green users in six months
Researchers discovered that Six months after Musk took over Twitter, only 52.5% of these green users were still using Twitter. a significantly higher churn rate than other comparable communities, including users actively discussing general policies on the platform.
“There is currently no platform equivalent to Twitter,” the team says. “Therefore, any change in the participation of environmentally conscious users, serious questions about where to follow the discourse on environmental protection and how to mobilize pro-environmental segments of the population”.
The authors consider it necessary to switch to different forms of environmental communication. Pressure to make changes to Twitter to help make Twitter a useful platform again for environmentalists, or to switch to another platform en masse, such as Mastodon or Hilos. They also point to sources like the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, which has brought people together to voice their concerns to Twitter representatives and lawmakers.
“The future of Twitter as a dissemination and research platform is uncertain”, says study. “We need to build collaborations between industry, nonprofit sectors and science to follow the public’s environmental concerns through social media platforms for the benefit of priority research, applied environmental protection and climate mitigation,” he adds.
Reference work, at this link.
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