Mobilizing Facebook Users against Facebook's Energy Policy: The Case of Greenpeace Unfriend Coal Campaign

Using Web 2.0 and Social Media Technologies to Foster Proenvironmental Action

“…For example, research indicates that greater use of online technologies to distribute information (e.g., frequent blogging) is associated with increased readership of the knowledge content [20,117]. Environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) use a variety of technologies (e.g., Facebook pages, YouTube videos, Twitter accounts) to foster visibility, raise awareness, and circulate relevant information and resources [14,118]. Technologies that allow for images to be shared and posted (e.g., Instagram, Facebook, blogs, Twitter) should be particularly effective and more captivating than text-only technologies (e.g., [20,[119][120][121]).…”

“…As a specific case example, consider Facebook, currently the most widely used SNS [14,30]. Facebook is strong in its capacity for dialogic communication (via messaging and commenting) and allows users to create pages or groups (private or public) for multi-person interaction.…”

“…SNSs are capable of inciting individuals to participants in online social causes and collective action [14,17,18,31,140,142]. That is, SNSs serve experiential purposes in that they engage users as participants in social causes through online activism [7,14,19,134,[143][144][145][146][147] and philanthropy [148,149].…”

“…Thus, online technologies (i.e., Web 2.0 and social media) have the potential to reach wide swaths of citizenry, and may represent primary (and as of yet under-researched [16]) mediums for encouraging action to protect the environment. In fact, the utility of Web 2.0 and social media is being tested in social science research seeking to build and organize communities (e.g., [31]) and for purposes of climate change communication (e.g., [14,16,20,32]) and environmental education (e.g., [11,23,33]). However, research has yet to establish the "best" technologies and how to maximize their effectiveness.…”

“…Nonetheless, individual and collective action is needed to help preserve natural environments and mitigate environmental problems [8,9]. Web 2.0 and social media technologies are a set of communication and organizational tools that are increasingly gaining attention for their potential to heighten environmental concern and facilitate sustainable behaviors in the general public [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”