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Abstract

With climate change being one of the most severe threats that face society today, it is important to examine how new sources of information can help spread awareness for it and create offline action. Alternative sources of information about global warming have become a necessity in contemporary society, with traditional news media outlets denying or remaining indifferent to it in the past because of their political bias. Therefore, it can be argued that due to their cultural status and large audiences, celebrities have become extremely effective activists for social issues. Potentially, social media has also enhanced their ability to advocate, with it possibly bridging the gap between Habermas’ private and public spheres (1992), to create a representation of McLuhan’s global village (2003). As a result, the term “metavoicing” is used to show how an original post’s message, is boosted by achieving likes, shares, and comments, increasing its visibility and ability to influence others. However, some argue that this only represents clicktivism, the idea online actions fail to produce any real change (Cabrera, Matias, & Montoya, 2017; Halupka, 2018; Morozov, 2011; 2013). Consequently, with celebrities frequently using social media to spread awareness for climate change, this dissertation discusses whether their online advocacy is effective, or simply produces clicktivism.
A textual analysis was conducted of three celebrity climate change activist’s social media pages, to discover the engagement rates of their most popular posts relating to global warming. By doing this, their post’s ability to engage their audiences can be identified, with high engagement ratings connotating that they were likely to encourage offline action. Ultimately, with each celebrity, mobilising, educating, and informing, their audiences, they were able to encourage political action and change people’s attitudes. As such, the research suggested that online celebrity activism is a useful tool for spreading awareness and producing offline action for climate change.

Course: Media Studies - BA (Hons) - C1346

Date Deposited: 2020-10-28

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis13596.html