WRITING 39C - ANIMAL SCIENCE
Me and the Big Blue Bird
Social Media Campaign
I have particular thoughts when it comes to social media and information in general. Especially with Twitter, I do think that it is the most accessible and relevant platform out there as of now. Social media has become the highway for information. It is built with entries into new areas and exits out of old and has become quite useful in creating shortcuts from one field to another. It gives unique opportunities to hear out the thoughts of those involved in the research and even more opportunities to learn for yourself what is out there. With Twitter as well, there exists a digital culture where everyone is given a voice whether it be for a human or a non-human animal. It's a chaotic ultra forum that lets even nobodies like me take a shot at saying something.
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Despite the praise, do I think Twitter is the best for research purposes? It's questionable at best given the atrocious reality. Traction in the algorithm depends on audience/follower engagement and whether the audience willingly wants to engage with one's content varies. It's no surprise to me a cute dog picture will gain more numbers than a study shared about owner-dog stress. In a time where click-bait exists and information has to be curated for those who simply don't care or can't be bothered to spare their attention span for things beyond their own self, it's a frustrating platform and experience. Nonetheless, I'm pleasantly surprised when I do see researchers, scientists, or even students like me rewarded with some visibility.
Featured below are the two favorite tweets I made. On the left is the tweet with the most engagement and on the right is one I wrote in Japanese to engage with a Japanese organization.
Translation Notes: My above tweet roughly translates to "We have to protect the lives and health of animals!"
SMC: Objectives & Showcase
The objective of the social media campaign (SMC) is to gather research and knowledge about the current existing issues for our dedicated species, in my case this being killer whales. The SMC project not only allows students to personally adopt a certain species and organizations related to their species, but pushes students to develop social media rhetoric to advocate and raise awareness for their species' issues. This advocacy involves not only identifying problems but also discussing solutions.
The Organization Spotlight Threads
On the left is the first tweet of my first "Organization Spotlight" thread. I don't think enough can be said with one tweet and neither can I pick only one tweet to show. I knew with how unreliable Twitter feeds can be, I wanted to curate all my tweets in a simple, organized way and starting with talking about WDC I decided to put my SMC tweets in a thread format. The "1/3" indicates it is the first of a total of 3 tweets that talk about the organization. One of the (unfortunate) limits of Twitter is its character limit, so when wanting to add links I had to use another site (bitly) to shorten them so I could include them and stay within the limit.
Secondly, like the previous tweet, this tweet is also the first of a 3 tweet thread about the organization. For both of the organizations' first tweets, I attached an image of their respective logos. Visuals are much more eye catching than text, so showing off the logos was a good way to not only promote the organization, but give the audience something to associate them with. Given that, including the handle actually got the organization to notice my effort last time with WDC, I did the same with CWR to also help others navigate to their Twitter profile. Mirroring the previous thread's success, I also included their goals, links, and comments of their blogs.
Diving into the Problems
I think the issue people are most familiar with specifically for killer whales are the exploitation of them in institutions such as SeaWorld. Following my usual thread format, I start the thread with the issue completely in capitalization. Typically, I also dedicate the first tweets of my campaign threads as brief introductions to either define the issue or quickly glaze over the harms of said issue. In addition, an image of the issue (in this case, captivity) is shown to easily recognize the problem. Even more, I think it was good to note that the image does depict the audience watching the live show to highlight the sheer number of people that are most likely unaware that what they're watching for pleasure is in fact, cruel.
The second/third tweets of the issue awareness threads are dedicated to helping the audience quickly and easily understand the harms. Given the character limit, and social media being the domain of limited attention span, you have to say your main points and go! All my tweets for the campaign followed a relatively cohesive formula for the sake of organization and ease. I could simply write an awkward paragraph trying to explain details, but this is ineffective. Truthfully, in my opinion, nobody comes to social media to read entire essays or read articles, but they do come to at least see them.
For this, after reading the National Geographic article to gain some background on the physiological and psychological harms of captivity on orcas, I compacted the negatives all into a list. The "front" end of my tweet is loaded with the crucial information then of course, I do follow up towards the end with my source and encourage others to read it as well.
Engaging with Solutions
When it came around to the days I had to make the solution tweets, I think the crucial change I had to make was a slight change in language. I feel like with advocacy in general it is very easy to ostracize the audience given how much guilt comes with the reality of the information they have learned. Hence, when I wrote the headers of the solution threads, I include "I" in them to avoid this. Guilt shaming with facts, statistics, science by itself is not effective and needs to be bridged with acknowledging that you have to let the audience learn, understand, and offer to help with change.
Asides from adding the image for visibility, I wanted to put the most important/accessible solution first for the thread. In all caps, I emphasize "MONEY TALKS" because I think it is an observation evident with advocacy. Spending money can be off putting, so I typically opened with the "free" solutions first.
With this thread specifically, protecting the ocean (the usual habitat of orcas and many other species) came with a multitude of sub issues, so in addition to the major "How do I help with [insert issue]?" header, I added sub-headings beneath to indicate the tweet's dedicated topic and solution. In this case I continue to use more inclusive language by making the sub-headings in a "Us VS [issue]" format.
I was also reminded by Yourofsky's talks where he said opposition by itself does not remedy issues. I personally feel sometimes, just tweeting pacts can be a bit useless, but they are good first steps so long as ways to change are provided. For the Us VS Plastic issue specifically, I added an image from WDC's site of small lifestyle changes can make.
Infographic and
Day-by-Day Plan
I wanted to dedicate the infographic to an issue that was mostly specific to killer whales. For this, I created the infographic around captivity and its harms. I actually used my original tweet from the captivity problem thread to highlight the harms. Though the tool I used to make the infographic didn't exactly have free symbols to use for the bodily harms orcas suffer, I also think it was a good way to incorporate real pictures of the damage.
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The above tweets featured on this page are what I consider the best of my social media campaign.
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My collection of the threads I made and commentary in making them can also be found here:
My SMC Day-by-Day Plan
