Eco-Equine: Horse Communities and the Environment

 Climate change is a big and touchy subject that is interpreted differently within every group. Finding the right method of communication and connection to environmental issues has no tried and true way forward as each must be tailored or framed to best represent the target group, their interests, and their fears. If a group is poorly communicated with, the results can be devastating and push them further away.

The group targeted is the Horse community, consisting of professional riders, veterinarians, and owners, people who work with and around horses and dedicate significant time to them. This group has personal significance to me as I grew up around the culture. I decided they would be an interesting group to look into because I believed they would be highly receptive to information about climate change and its dangers. Simply put, I believed they would have a larger connection to the natural world, a bigger stake in climate change, and would be an effective force for change and lobbying of political leaders. These perks of the group would be able to overcome the barriers to beneficial action on climate change.

To target the group, I chose to use Facebook, a social media site used commonly in the community. I would make a group dedicated to passing information in the form of infographics and allowing space for questions and debate, all structured around horses and the environment. 

In making the infographics, I chose to take a harder approach and avoid sugarcoating when possible—basing my ideas on Stoknes' five barriers to climate action. These include distance, thinking climate change is a faraway problem geographically and time-wise, doom, the idea that climate change is too massive a subject and grief and despair prevent any action, dissonance, downplaying actions to make life and decisions easier, denial, believing that you are being lied to or someone is just trying to take control away, and lastly identity, the connection to specific groups or ideologies that make us more or less likely to connect with information. Utilizing these five barriers, the horse community appears very prepared for climate action. Dissonance is something everyone does, so it hardly presents the community as being climate-action resistant. Instead, the horse 'world' is one made up of outdoors people with tight budgets. The horse community does not have the same capacity for denial and doom that other groups might have because there's no room to budge in the Equestrian industry.

I planned out three infographics to cover the extent of the points I believed would be most effective in bridging the barriers facing the community. They were made using the online graphic designer, Canva.

The first infographic was simply covering environmental climate change topics. I wanted to set a baseline of knowledge to base the later graphics on. I did not anticipate dealing with any denialism from the community, but I made sure that the information communicated was clearly accessible and from reputable sites.

The second infographic was the one I expected to be the most impactful. This one looked at economic impacts, focusing on gas prices, maintenance, and events. This graphic received the most interaction. This, paired with the first graphic were intended to resolve any distance barriers and drive home the idea that climate change is a real and local issue affecting the industry. I chose to target gas prices as a means to indirectly target the common dissonance in the community through the use of large low gas mileage hauling vehicles such as trucks. Anyone can put together a piece fighting the use of these large polluting vehicles, but the industry currently needs them to transport horses and equipment. Targeting gas and fuel allows me to turn the conversation towards looking for alternatives, a much more positive and engaging conversation.

The final was one more out of courtesy, involving more direct horse topics such as health and disease. From speaking with members of the community, it's very clear that a vast majority of those who work closely with horses understand the encroaching threats of diseases and parasites as climate shifts and insects and other carriers move further north.

I wanted this project to frame the conversation towards growth and innovation, recognizing what can be improved first and foremost.

Facebook proved to be a difficult medium to work with due to several reasons that limited the effectiveness of the project. Social media, in general, is intended to be stress-free and noncommittal, so it is understandable that many people would either ignore the invitations or refuse them, not wanting to be involved at the time. It's also completely believable that people do not know they have been invited and only check their Facebook when they expect something to happen, like answering the door only when you're expecting someone. To improve this, even in the same medium of using Facebook or social media, more direct outreach is needed. The level of connection with influencers within the community that would help bring more people into the group was low and was met with mixed results as many of the influencers targeted were busy with other matters. 

I would argue my project successfully communicated to the group and crossed the barriers I intended to but not to the level I had hoped. The group expressed some new connections that members hadn't considered before and reinforced beliefs in the importance of combating climate change from community feedback.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecoequine

References

Stoknes, P. E. (2015). "Climate Is the New Marx": The Many Faces of Skepticism and Denial. In J,     Praded     (Ed.), What we think about when we try not to think about global warming: Toward a new psychology of climate action(pp. 58-100). Chelsea Green Publishi

ng.

Stoknes, P. E. (2015). The Roots of Denial: The Psychology of Identity. In J, Praded (Ed.), What we think about when we try not to think about global warming: Toward a new psychology of climate action(pp. 203-229). Chelsea Green Publishing.

Stoknes, P. E. (2015). The Power of Social Networks. In J, Praded (Ed.), What we think about when we try not to think about global warming: Toward a new psychology of climate action(pp. 257-292). Chelsea Green Publishing.

Stuart, D. (2018). Climate change and ideological transformation in United States agriculture. Sociologia Ruralis, 58(1), 63-82.