How health professionals can use social media to spread environmental awareness
Following the recent findings of the IPCC 2021 report, the evidence around how human-induced climate change has accelerated global warming is devastating. Rising temperatures have brought an increased frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events including heat waves, wildfires, floods and storms. Consequently, we may see a rise in vector-borne disease, respiratory disease due to air pollution, displacement of land resulting in the rise of climate refugees and many more adverse effects. Despite this evidence, many people globally are unaware of the impacts of climate change on human health.
Fortunately, a large evidence base suggests that educating individuals around the harms of climate change on human health and its solutions to tackle it can cultivate more support from the public to carry out actions needed to decrease emissions. As frontline workers observing these impacts, health professionals can play a crucial role in educating the public and advocating for policy makers to take action to reduce emissions and protect people from the harmful effects of climate change.
This blog will discuss the impact of social media on environmental awareness, and ways social media can be used to spread awareness on climate change.
The role of social media in environmental awareness
The use of social media has become integral to everyday life. In 2020, there were over 3.6 billion social media users recorded worldwide and research has found that 45% of the people in UK use social media to keep up with the latest news. Social media is a powerful tool for individuals to create, share opinions and receive knowledge. On a larger scale, organisations and governments can use social media to directly promote their business and key messages to consumers and citizens. Take example, SHE Changes Climate, a campaign for women leadership on COP26 aimed for the UK government for 50:50 representation on COP26’s leadership team. By promoting the campaign through news outlets like BBC, Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and more, the campaign was able to obtain 400 leading women from scientist to celebrities to sign the campaign and amassed a total readership of over 900 million, showcasing how using social media can help spread a message. Keeping up with the advancement of technology, social media introduces a platform for individuals, corporations and governing bodies to bridge a gap and improve engagement with and between isolated individuals when advocating for environmental awareness.
Rapid and more accessible dissemination of research:
Social media has the power to make climate research more accessible to both clinicians and the general public. The Climate and Ecological Emergency bill drafted by a cross-party alliance of scientists, legal experts, ecological economists and environmentalists was introduced as a private bill to push the UK government to take action in response to our climate and ecological emergency. Research has found that 65% of the population are visual learners, where seeing the information can help information retention. Converting research findings into visual forms through infographics, images or videos enables the breakdown of scientific jargon, allowing easier comprehension and reducing reading time. Looking at data journalist and illustrator Mona Chalabis’ visual representation of an article on the links of urban street tree biodiversity and antidepressant prescriptions (see fig 1.) shows her ability to dissect a complex article, marrying it with graphic design, allowing readers to comprehend the main article findings without the need to read a lengthy text. Chalabi’s vision and work on visual data representation have cultivated a mass following of over 437,000 followers on Instagram wanting to educate themselves on current news and research.
Figure 1. Mona Chalabi’s visual presentation of Nature journal, “Urban street tree biodiversity and antidepressant prescriptions”.
Social media has also made the process of sharing knowledge faster than ever. Functions like tagging other users to a post, reacting and re-posting content can allow posts to generate a great deal of attention in a very short amount of time. With the increased popularity of viral content, news channels may pick up the story and reach those without social media, increasing its spread.
Amplify voices
Social media can provide health professionals with a platform to amplify their voice, engage, coordinate and mobilise for climate action. For example, in August 2018, Greta Thunberg stood by the Swedish parliament steps alone, protesting against the government's lack of action on the climate crisis. Through engaging with social media and by coining her movement with the hashtag #Fridaysforfuture (FFF), the FFF movement went viral, inspiring an estimated 1.6 million students worldwide to join the movement, rapidly sparking a new wave of change. The FFF movement highlights how social media can allow clusters of like-minded people to come together to build a network to influence and educate others through the spread of their messages.
How health professionals can use social media to spread environmental awareness
As health professionals, we have the professional responsibility to safeguard our patients' health. Whilst the climate crisis persists, it will continue to persist as an ongoing threat to human health. Thus, as a health professional, being in a privileged position of the most trusted profession, it presents an opportunity for us to use our voice and power to influence, promote awareness of climate issues, challenge public policy, reduce footprint for societies and encourage climate conversations with patients.
Health professionals can use social media as a networking platform to share ideas among fellow clinicians, researchers and patients. Through building a mutual following among clinicians and institutes, it can allow both parties to exchange research findings and insights on climate health impacts, share innovative sustainable project in the aims of sparking a conversation and encouraging action.
Health professionals can also use images, short videos and infographics to create attention-grabbing visual content to improve content engagement and promote climate action. For instance, when the Doctors for Extinction Rebellion carried out their protest against the UK governments inaction to the threat of climate change in 2019, eye-catching and thought-provoking demonstrations (as seen in the video below) quickly caught the attention of social media where the movement shortly went viral.
3 tips for posting on social media platforms
Twitter remains one of the most popular platforms used among healthcare professionals. Here, we explore some tips on how Twitter can be used to advocate for climate change:
When creating your message, remember to make them MAS: Memorable, Actionable and Sharable
- Memorable: Keep your messages simple – short and to the point. Posts with text or videos that are too long will often be ignored by users. Make them easy to visualise with the use of images and concrete words. Creative tools like Canva, a free graphic design platform has a wide variety of templates and graphics to choose from that can help develop visual content for your social media posts e.g. posters, infographics, videos. In addition, use “chunking” as a method to create one unified message that pulls the components together and embed “triggers” to help tie the message to a cue in the environment
- Actionable: Research has found that adding a call-to-action component to a message amplifies the overall motivational value of the message. Specify when to act, stating “if-then” actions encourage people to make a clear plan. Understand your audience and invoke relevant subjective norms in your message to encourage behavioural intention e.g. “we have to act now or failure to do so would betray our children and future generation”.
- Sharable: Creating a message that is novel, shocking – information gaps can spark curiosity, motivating people to seek more clarity around the topic. Then follow this up with giving a solution to fill that information gap through a call-for-action, linking a research article, or adding an explanatory image. For example, we can take a shocking little-known fact, “Did you know? If all healthcare systems of the world were considered as a single country, they would have the fifth largest carbon footprint” then adding a solution, “Sign this petition to end fossil fuel funding in the NHS (insert link)”. The use of hashtags can also expand the reach of your message and make tracking content around the topic easier.
With the benefits of social media discussed, it is also important to consider its risks. Misinformation or false news spreads at a faster rate than true news and can have a substantial impact on public health. Before you post on social media, consider and understand the impact of your post, remember to remain professional and think before you post. When in doubt, speak to an experienced colleague or consult your local organisations’ or professional bodies’ policy on social media for help and advice.
Promoting Environmental Awareness through health professions curricula
We now recognise social media’s power as a platform for health professionals to contribute to greater awareness and action on the impacts of climate change on human health. In the near future integration of environmental literacy and climate health advocacy into health professional curricula will perhaps encourage future health professionals to recognise climate action as a professional responsibility, as reflected in Hippocratic Oath. This will aid achieving the overarching goal to slow down the impacts of climate change and safeguard future generations to come.
Sustainability and health organisations on social media
There are numerous organisations focusing on the intersection of health and sustainability, that disseminate the latest environmental, health, and sustainability news, courses, and events on social media. The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 350, Climate Reality are organisations that have developed noteworthy social media presence with the aim to engage the public in climate health awareness and solutions. Here is a list of organisations committed to sustainability and health that you can follow to stay informed.
Further resources for social media advocacy
- The Global Climate and Health Alliance Twitter Toolkit for professionals
- Advocacy skills for climate action webinar
Shiwei Ooi
University of Leeds MBChB Year 5
Shiwei is an undergraduate medical student at the University of Leeds. She started a society known as Leeds Healthcare Students for Climate Action to support climate action among healthcare students at her university and is interested in planetary health education, climate health advocacy and communication.