Conservation Conversation

 Communicating to Conservatives about Climate Change through Twitter

https://twitter.com/CC_cleanfuture

                Conservation Conversation is a Twitter account I created to spread awareness about the fiscal, economic and personal benefits of addressing climate change for citizens of the United States. I intended for the account to help create a space on Twitter where conservatives are more inclined to hold a productive discussion on climate change. The issue of climate change is arguably one of the most polarized topics within the United States. Due to the polarization, conversations about climate change can easily become hostile and unproductive. To avoid this from happening while attempting to grow the Twitter account I utilized several framing strategies.

                For the majority of my posts I used framing strategies from Stoknes' book, What we think about  when we try not to think about global warming, and Baldwin & Lammers' paper, Past-focused environmental comparisons promote pro environmental outcomes for conservatives. I also tried to only retweet post that fit these frames or other frames that might appeal to conservatives. Stoknes wrote about numerous frames that could be useful when attempting to communicate about climate change. I chose to use an opportunist and insurance frame. I felt that these frames appealed to most conservatives values. Rather than focus on the sacrifices we may have to make to combat climate change, I wrote about how many potential jobs can be created by investing in environmentally friendly forms of energy. Instead of writing about how costly not addressing climate change can be, I focused on how taking steps now will save the United States tremendous amounts of money in the future. I frequently mentioned how we cannot afford to fall behind foreign nations, such as China, in generating economic opportunity from clean energy. Baldwin and Lammers' paper's central focus was that conservatives have a different temporal focus that liberals. They conducted studies that resulting in showing that conservatives respond more positively to messages about climate change framed with a past-orientation. I strived to emphasize how the environment used to be healthier. I posted about how the United States used to have plentiful resources and an economy that was brimming with jobs.

             Twitter proved to be a difficult media platform for me to utilize and grow a following on. My goals before started the project were to have somewhere between 40-50 followers. Unfortunately, I ended up with 18 followers, so I did quite reach my follower goal. Prior to creating my account I had no experience on Twitter. I also did not have any close family or friends who use Twitter, which would have let me jumpstart my following. My strategy was to follow a large number of groups and individuals who had climate change and conservative related terminology in their profile. I quickly realized that my posts were not as successful at gaining likes and retweets compared to my retweets. Retweeting frequently gained my page a few followers with large followings such as, @climatemessages who boasted 14,000 followers. 

             I chose to utilize Twitter despite my lack of familiarity with the media platform because of the influence Twitter has. Since completing the project I have learned how influential a large scale Twitter account has the potential to be. Twitter allows users to reach and unprecedented amount of people at a very high rate. One really interesting thing I noticed while doing this project is that there was a significant amount of accounts who all followed the same larger accounts. A number of the individuals I followed had already elected to follow many of the same climate changes organizations that I had. I am uncertain what the exact correlation was, but I found it very interesting. I believe that Twitter is an extremely useful media platform for attempting to communicate with people about climate change who may be skeptics or deniers. 

• Baldwin, M., & Lammers, J. (2016). Past-focused environmental comparisons promote proenvironmental outcomes for conservatives. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(52), 14953-14957. doi:10.1073/pnas.1610834113
  
  
• Stoknes, P. E. (2015). What we think about when we try not to think about global warming: Toward a new psychology of climate action. In What we think about when we try not to think about global warming: Toward a new psychology of climate action (pp. 255-282). White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing.