Showing love for what's at stake in the climate crisis
The Climate Coalition's "Show the Love" campaign appeals to hope for the future to influence UK national climate policy
I hope that you are staying safe and warm, as we continue to dig out of the major winter storm that has blanketed much of the United States. In honor of Valentine’s Day Sunday, in this week’s newsletter I share one of my favorite examples of hopeful, and engaging, climate change social media messaging, #ShowtheLove.
The U.K.-based Climate Coalition’s annual “Show the Love” campaign got its start in 2015. This year’s campaign runs February 1 to 21.
“Show the Love is an annual celebration of everything we care about and want to protect from the worst impacts of the climate crisis. People from across the UK use the power of green hearts to join together and ask decision makers to tackle the climate crisis.”
The campaign highlights a mix of individual agency and political engagement to lobby politicians for societal structural changes. As climate scientists have argued individual lifestyle changes are not enough to avoid the most catastrophic climate change scenarios. Broader changes to societal changes are needed.
I have my climate change communication students examine the ways in which the “Show the Love” campaign applies climate messaging best practices of:
Make messaging meaningful to your audience (and make sure you know who that audience is).
Build connections with your audience through stories and narratives. Share what you care—or are passionate—about and the associated climate risk.
Appeal to positive social norms to promote collective action.
Make it tangible. Connect to climate impacts that hit close to home.
Focus discussion of policy solutions on what is to be gained through action, not what would be lost.
Be sensitive to the ongoing challenges individuals and communities are facing from the COVID-19 pandemic. Focus messaging on “preparation and resilience,” as well as fairness.
For more best practices on communicating on climate change during the pandemic, refer to this guide from Climate Outreach.
Green hearts to “Show the Love”
The United Kingdom became the first country to declare a “climate emergency” in 2019. A majority of Britons (71%) see climate change as a “major threat,” according to the Pew Research Center, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This is similar to the number of U.K. adults saying that the spread of infectious diseases is a major threat (74%) to their country.
The U.K. has played a key role in setting the agenda for European climate action (and it will be interesting to see the future trajectory of this post-Brexit). Under the government of former Prime Minister Theresa May, the U.K. set a legally binding target to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The country is gearing up to host the UN climate talks, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland later this year.
The Climate Coalition made up of more than 140 organizations, including sports, environmental and conservation, faith communities, international development NGOs and others.
“Show the Love” campaign reach
To analyze the effectiveness of the campaign at raising climate change on the U.K. national agenda during the first half of the month I used the social data analytic software Brandwatch. I set-up a search for social media posts in English which included the key word operator #showthelove OR (#thetimeisnow AND climate) from February 1 to 14. The bulk of the data came from Twitter.
#TheTimeisNow is a related Climate Coalition campaign calling on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to focus on a green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic ahead of the COP26 climate talks in November:
“The UK must lead the world by ensuring our recovery gets us on track to net-zero emissions and limits the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees C. Our best chance of building a resilient economy goes hand in hand with tackling climate change.”
During its first two weeks the “Show the Love” campaign had a total of 4,658 mentions (up 709% over the previous two week period in January) from 2,567 unique authors (up 782%). The number of Twitter impressions, the number of times Twitter users saw tweets mentioning the campaign, was high as well.
During the first two weeks of the campaign there were two distinct peaks. The first on Friday, February 12, which the Climate Coalition dubbed “Good News Day.” They encouraged supporters to share “stories of how people, businesses and communities are working to build a cleaner greener future.” The second peak in post volume was on Valentine’s Day itself.
The most often mentioned Twitter accounts were:
An example post from the Church of England Environment Programme:
One of the most popular posts came from the Manchester City Football Club:
Perhaps unsurprisingly the majority of geotagged social posts came from the U.K., followed by the United States and Canada.
“Show the Love” conversation themes
The first week of “Show the Love” Twitter conversation was largely driven by the release of a report from the Climate Coalition, along with the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change and Priestley International Centre for Climate, on climate change health risks to the British public:
“The health of more than 12 million people – equivalent to the populations of Greater London and Greater Manchester combined - is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Millions in the UK are vulnerable to blistering heatwaves and major flood events, made more likely by climate change…
If decision-makers commit to take urgent, decisive action, we will live healthier lives with cleaner air and more green spaces. It is only through successful global action to reduce emissions we will stop climate change.”
Social conversation in the second week of “Show the Love” was dominated by themes related to participating in the event by putting a “green heart in your window,” along themes like #togetherforourplanet and “add your voice.”
The last graphic I’ll share is a word cloud of the 150 most common terms, phrases and emojis used during the first two weeks of the campaign. The overall emotional valence of social posts was positive, as measured by the data analytic software Brandwatch.
The importance of hope in climate messaging
A key challenge to communicating on climate change is to reduce the sense of “psychological distance” that someone perceives on the issue. For many people climate change impacts feel distant in both time and space. In other words, removed from everyday life. This is a challenge that could be heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Social media usage to engage on climate change may help to personalize the issue for individuals and bring it closer to home. Experimental research shows that hope is a “key mediator” between messaging framed in terms of future benefits of climate action (e.g. “Stopping Climate Change Will Benefit US Health”)—or “gain-framed” messaging—with climate policy attitudes and advocacy.
Research also shows that framing, or messaging, climate change in terms of public health can elicit hopeful emotions when that framing is paired with discussion of climate solutions to reduce the projected health impacts. In fact, researchers have found that a “public health focus was the most likely to elicit emotional reactions consistent with support for climate change mitigation and adaptation.” An important take-away is to pair messaging about public health threats with actions individuals can take to to address the problem.
Thanks for reading! Stay safe and warm. 💚