Since the sale of the platform formerly known as Twitter in October 2022, almost half of its ‘environmentalist’ users – including scientists, policymakers and activists – have stopped tweeting.
Researchers in the US compared the tweeting habits of 380,000 regular environmentalists with those of 458,000 control users who were more interested in the US Presidential Election.
Researchers selected the 2020 election as a control topic because it is widely and frequently discussed. This indicates that it should be representative of a large sample of Twitter Users.
The study found that the number of active Twitter users (defined as people who had posted at least one Tweet on the topic within a 15-day time period) declined by 47,5 percent by April 2023.
The authors of the report note that this is a much higher dropout rate compared to the general population, and express concern over the implications for public discourse as well as environmental activism.
Only 20.6 per cent of users referred by the authors to as Politics Twitter saw a decrease.
This new research builds upon the findings of previous studies. Study conducted by the same team in 2022, which analyzed the Twitter activity of 1 million environmentally-engaged people, seeking to understand the factors that influence people’s conservation attitudes.
We found six distinct personas, based on their interest in public lands and biodiversity conservation. Climate change mitigation,” You can find out more about this by clicking here.Charlotte Chang, biologist and environment analyst at Pomona College. Lead author of both studies.
Twitter is the most popular platform used by environmentalists for collaboration, sharing ideas, research and finding new ways to work with each other.
“We observed that there were many people engaged in a lively discussion around environmental issues,” Chang You can find out more about this by clicking here..
The question then arose as to what impact Twitter’s changes in governance may have on this community.
Social media platforms similar to Twitter have a much smaller user base. The team believes that any changes in the way users who are concerned about the environment interact on the site will raise serious questions as to how people can work together.
The authors of a new study say that “the rapid decline in active users is alarming and represents a significant loss for conservation,” Writer.
Environmental researchers and activists are also at risk of reducing their use. exacerbating social dividesAs groups isolate themselves further from different perspectives on completely different platforms rather than just different networks within the platform,
It is not a recent survey by NatureMore than half of the over 9,000 researchers who use Twitter say they spend less on it now than they did a year ago. And nearly 7 percent don’t even use it anymore.
Researchers surveyed reported that they have seen a rise in fake accounts, hate speech, and trolls on Twitter. Environmental scientist Žiga Malek from the Free University of Amsterdam, reported encountering many “strange” political far-right accounts promoting science denialism and racism, and having to constantly block them.
Hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick: “The amount, vituperativeness and intensity of abuse have skyrocketed in the last few months since the takeover at Twitter and the changes that were made.” Tell them to get on with it AFP.
About 46 percent NatureThe survey respondents also used other social media platforms, such as Mastodon Bluesky, Threads and TikTok.
Chang and his colleagues say that environmental advocates and researchers must be ready to quickly adapt if people leave Twitter in favor of these alternatives. By tracking the platforms that environmental voices use or by launching a campaign to migrate supporters onto a new platform, advocates and researchers can continue to exchange information, mobilize, and conduct research.
The authors say that “such changes increase the need for collaborations between industry, non-profits, and academia.” Consider a conclusion“Track public engagement with the environmental across social media platforms in order to benefit from primary research, climate mitigation, and applied environmental conservation.”
The new study was published on Trends in Ecology, Evolution and BiologyThe survey is conducted in Nature.
