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1 Introduction

In the face of pressing environmental issues such as climate change, air pollution, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity, it is more important than ever to make actionable science to address those challenges. Today, the vast digital landscapes of social media platforms offer a new avenue to sense the perceptions and engage the public in environmental discourse. This can foster increased understanding and awareness of environmental issues, their causes, consequences, and possible solutions. In addition, through analysis of posts, comments, shares, and other interactions in social media platforms, researchers can gauge public sentiment and opinion on environmental issues. It provides valuable insight into public knowledge, misconceptions, or concerns, helping scientists, policymakers, and educators target their efforts more effectively. Moreover, social media provides a platform for individuals, groups, and organizations to mobilize action on environmental issues. It can range from organizing events and protests, promoting conservation efforts, to sharing tips for sustainable living. Therefore, effective use and understanding of social media can significantly contribute to actionable environmental science by bridging the gap between scientific knowledge, public understanding, and policy-making.

This chapter will first explore how social media have been leveraged to identify public awareness and opinions toward environmental change and identify environmental change awareness. Secondly, the chapter will investigate a significant challenge within the social media platform – the proliferation of misinformation. The rapid spread of false or misleading information about environmental changes can hinder efforts to raise awareness and inspire action. This section explores the prevalence and impact of misinformation, the mechanisms of its spread, and strategies to counteract it. Thirdly, the chapter will introduce numerous tools and applications that can be harnessed to collect, analyze, and utilize data from social media platforms. By understanding how to effectively use these tools, researchers, policy-makers, and environmental advocates can gain valuable insights that can inform strategies and policies. Lastly, we will discuss how all these elements can be integrated toward actionable solutions for environmental change. As we delve into the role of influencers, governments, and individuals in disseminating information, we will explore how social media platforms can be leveraged to drive meaningful action for environmental change.

Social media platforms provide many opportunities in actionable environmental science as well as challenges. Throughout this chapter, we hope to provide a comprehensive understanding of how we can leverage the power of social media to create meaningful discourse around environmental change, raise public awareness, and drive action that will lead us toward a more sustainable environment.

2 Sensing Awareness and Opinions on Environmental Changes in Social Media Platforms

2.1 Social Media: A Source of Environmental Change Awareness

Social media’s transformative impact on the landscape of information exchange is undeniable, acting as a robust conduit for the propagation of ideas, discussions, and perspectives on a global scale. It has democratized access to information and catalyzed societal discourse on myriad topics. Among these, the role of social media in bolstering environmental consciousness is worth emphasizing due to its remarkable power and potential. Under their expansive reach and instantaneous communication, social media platforms have transformed into instruments for broadcasting environmental dilemmas, elucidating challenges, and promulgating innovative solutions.

Platforms such as Twitter, Weibo, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, to name a few, are teeming with a broad spectrum of environmental content. This includes informative material on climatic transformations and biodiversity depletion, and public appeals for initiatives like recycling campaigns or climate strikes, all meticulously curated to enlighten, communicate, and galvanize the masses toward environmental conservation. In social media, hashtags such as #ClimateChange, #GlobalWarming, #Savetheplant, and #PlasticFree has evolved from fleeting trends to potent symbols – effective rallying points for individuals and organizations to augment awareness, disseminate knowledge, and spur collective action. These digital rallying cries have initiated a paradigm shift in how environmental issues are perceived and discussed (Vu et al. 2021).

Furthermore, social media platforms serve as a vital arena for environmental activists, including emerging leaders like Greta Thunberg. Their impassioned messages and real-time activism updates frequently capture the public’s imagination, leading to viral circulation and catapulting environmental issues into the mainstream discourse. This amplification effect is equally significant for numerous environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and movements. Social media provides these entities an interactive space to engage with their audience, disseminate progress updates, and orchestrate real-time coordinated actions.

The role of social media is also critical in science communication, particularly for spreading awareness and understanding of environmental science (Osterrieder 2013). Environmental scientists, climatologists, and biologists, among other specialists, are increasingly harnessing the power of social media to convey their research findings in a more digestible and engaging format (Perrin 2015; Auxier and Anderson 2021; Van Eperen and Marincola 2011). This involves transforming complex datasets into easy-to-understand visualizations, memes, or bite-sized videos. Through such innovative methods, these experts are disseminating essential knowledge and combating the rampant spread of myths and misinformation, which are often ubiquitous on digital platforms.

2.2 Gauging Public Discussions on Environmental Changes in Social Media

Social media is an abundant repository of information for scholars interested in assessing public consciousness, dispositions, and viewpoints on climate change, pollution, conservation initiatives, and other environmental subjects (Mavrodieva et al. 2019). Scholars typically employ quantitative and qualitative strategies to extract and interpret this data in their research methods. Traditional methodologies consisted of manual content analysis where scholars would painstakingly sift through posts to discern trends and themes in public conversations. While comprehensive, this approach is labor-intensive and frequently falls short of handling the immense data volume on social media platforms (Li et al. 2021).

With technological advancements in recent years, more sophisticated methods have been developed to efficiently retrieve and analyze public sentiments from these platforms. Technologies like Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms are deployed to classify and interpret texts, thus enabling the automatic detection of the sentiment behind social media posts and their categorization according to the specific environmental subject they address. For example, sentiment analysis, a sub-discipline of NLP, is routinely used to decipher if the overall sentiment of a post is positive, negative, or neutral (Loureiro and Alló 2020; Dahal et al. 2019; Cody et al. 2015). This approach has proven highly valuable in assessing public opinion regarding contentious environmental matters. Additionally, topic modeling techniques such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) are employed to reveal latent topics in vast volumes of textual data, thereby aiding scholars in identifying the principal themes in public conversations about environmental changes (Dahal et al. 2019; Benites-Lazaro et al. 2018; Al-Rawi et al. 2021). Network analysis is another often-employed technique to understand the spread of information and opinions on environmental topics across social media networks. By analyzing the interconnections among social media users, scholars can identify influential entities driving discussions about environmental changes and discern the pathways these conversations traverse (Williams et al. 2015; Wang et al. 2020).

Nevertheless, these methods are not without their limitations. They frequently encounter difficulties in understanding the subtleties and contexts of human language, notably sarcasm or cultural references (Huang et al. 2022). They may also exhibit bias toward the platform’s prevalent language, often English, thereby potentially not representing global perspectives on environmental changes comprehensively (Wang et al. 2023). Issues such as privacy concerns may limit access to social media data, and the presence of “bots” and “trolls” can distort findings (Starbird 2019; Paavola et al. 2016). Despite these obstacles, social media continues to be a potent instrument for assessing public conversations on environmental changes. With the consistent advancements in technology and analytical methodologies, the potential to understand and engage with these conversations is poised for growth.

2.3 Opinions and Initiatives for Environmental Change Advocacy in Social Media

Navigating the terrain of the contemporary digital landscape, it is becoming increasingly clear that social media is not just a mere communication tool, but an indispensable resource for advocacy and change (Guo and Saxton 2014; Pang 2013). A compelling illustration of this transformative potential lies in environmental conservation. In this arena, social media has emerged as a powerful platform to catalyze action, effect change, and shift societal norms. Elaborating on the various opinions and initiatives currently harnessed to advocate for environmental change on these platforms, it becomes evident that the digital advocacy toolkit is diverse and multifaceted. Among the most prominent strategies are awareness-raising campaigns, which have proliferated widely across different social media platforms. These campaigns, in their essence, leverage the power of hashtags and the potential virality of digital content to disseminate critical information about pressing environmental issues, such as climate change (Titifanue et al. 2017), deforestation (Daume et al. 2014), and pollution (Mei et al. 2014). By crafting engaging and shareable content, these campaigns seek to educate the public about the existential threats facing our planet and, crucially, to galvanize them into taking informed, committed action. In addition to these campaigns, another significant development in online environmental advocacy is the ascendance of “eco-influencers.” These individuals, often experts in environmental sciences, fervent activists, or well-known public figures dedicated to the cause, wield considerable influence on social media to advance environmental conservation. They do this by sharing ecologically responsible practices, endorsing products that align with sustainable living, and fostering informed discussions around the latest research in the field. The effectiveness of these eco-influencers is markedly augmented by the trust and admiration that they inspire among their followers, a dynamic that often results in concrete action in the real world. Meanwhile, many advocacy groups have innovatively adapted “crowdsourcing” strategies to the social media landscape. These approaches enable the groups to solicit ideas, strategies, and even financial resources from the public. Such open-sourced solutions engender widespread participation in environmental advocacy and foster inclusivity by ensuring that a diverse array of voices and perspectives is represented in the conversation. Lastly, there is a growing trend of virtual protests and online movements, a testament to the unifying power of social media. Notably, digital climate strikes, inspired by the young activist Greta Thunberg, have shown how social media can mobilize the masses toward environmental change. These initiatives are particularly potent as they overcome geographical barriers, enabling individuals worldwide to participate in a powerful demonstration of support for environmental action. Social media platforms offer a cornucopia of opportunities for advocating environmental change, spanning awareness campaigns, eco-influencers, crowdsourcing efforts, and online movements. When effectively harnessed, these initiatives have the potential to significantly amplify the reach and impact of environmental advocacy, underscoring their pivotal role in our collective fight against environmental degradation and climate change.

3 Misinformation in Social Media Platforms

Misinformation on environmental change in social media is a growing concern that impacts public perception, decision-making, and policy-making processes. A common definition of misinformation is referring to information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading. Misinformation can be spread intentionally or unintentionally. When it is spread with the intent to deceive, it is often referred to as disinformation. As the rapid development of social media platforms, misinformation is increasingly shared across these platforms in various forms, such as news, videos, images, memes, and personal communications, among others.

Several studies have documented the widespread prevalence of misinformation related to environmental issues on social media platforms. For example, Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral’s study (2018) is a significant contribution to understanding how information propagates through social networks. The authors used a dataset of rumor cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017 to study how truthful, false, and mixed news spreads online. Their findings suggest that false news reached more people than the truth, that false news was 70% more likely to be retweeted than the truth, and that false news was significantly more novel than true news. Another study examined the role of political identity in influencing perceptions of climate change on social media (Bergquist et al. 2020). They found that climate change misinformation often gets amplified within politically homogeneous social networks on Facebook.

In addition, researchers have investigated the relationship between media consumption, trust in scientists, and beliefs about environmental changes, such as global warming. Hmielowski et al. (2014) conducted a longitudinal survey of American adults and found that the relationship between media use and perceptions of global warming was mediated by trust in scientists. Van der Linden et al. (2017) used a survey-based experiment to test the inoculation theory, using a fabricated blog post that denied the scientific consensus on climate change as the misinformation “threat.” The results showed that the inoculation messages were effective in neutralizing the effects of misinformation, with the specific inoculation proving to be even more effective than the general one. These findings highlight the critical role of media in shaping public perceptions of scientific facts and the potential for misinformation to erode trust in scientific authorities, leading to misperceptions about pressing issues like environmental change.

What can be done about misinformation about environmental change? The first strategy is early detection of malicious accounts in social media platforms, such as bots, and spammers. Social media bots can potentially threat public opinion and democracy toward environmental change. Researchers have designed many methods to detect bots and these methods can be classified as feature-based, graph-based, crowdsourcing-based, and combined approaches (Orabi et al. 2020). Botometer (formerly BotOrNot) is a popular tool using machine learning to predict the likelihood that a Twitter account is a bot (Subrahmanian et al. 2016). It uses a publicly available APIFootnote 1 and scores accounts based on a range of features, including user metadata, friend’s metadata, tweet content and sentiment, and network patterns. While researchers have made efforts to detect and remove malicious bots, it remains a challenging problem due to the ever-evolving tactics of those who create and control these bots. This makes the ongoing work of researchers studying these issues, as well as policy measures aimed at reducing the malicious use of bots, crucial in the fight against misinformation.

The second strategy is social media platforms and government regulations and policies. Social media platforms themselves have a significant role to play in managing the content disseminated on their platforms. This includes developing and enforcing policies to deal with misinformation, providing warnings for disputed content, and promoting more transparency about how their algorithms work. On March 31, 2023, Twitter made its recommendation algorithm open-source in GitHub.Footnote 2 At the policy level, regulations can be implemented that require social media platforms to take greater responsibility for the spread of misinformation on their sites. As demonstrated in the study by Van der Linden et al. (2017), proactive measures hold significant potential in the fight against misinformation, particularly in the realm of environmental change. This underlines the importance of communicating accurate scientific information to the public in a manner that anticipates and counteracts the spread of misinformation.

The third strategy involves promoting media literacy and fostering critical thinking skills. There is a rising recognition of the significance of media literacy for deciphering multifaceted environmental messages in the media. By understanding the structural aspects of misinformation and the tactics often used, users can become more adept at spotting false information. This could involve identifying the emotional manipulation often embedded in misinformation or understanding how partial truths are sometimes used to bolster false claims. Alongside knowing about misinformation, it is equally essential to recognize credible information sources. This means being cognizant of the diversity of sources, their potential predispositions, and their overall dependability. Numerous studies highlight the necessity of digital literacy skills, such as the capability to evaluate the trustworthiness of a source, for successfully navigating the complex information landscape of social media. However, it is important to note that media literacy is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It necessitates continuous efforts and the inclusion of media literacy education in school syllabuses, public education initiatives, and possibly even on social media platforms. Nonetheless, as social media increasingly impacts public perceptions of environmental change, cultivating media literacy becomes an essential step toward fostering an informed and engaged population.

4 Tools and Applications for Actional Environmental Insights

4.1 Tools and Applications for Social Media Data Collection

Public tools, platforms, and products for social media data collection and analysis are essential for enhancing actionable environmental change science. These tools provide users with access to large volumes of social media data, enabling them to analyze public perceptions, behaviors, and opinions related to environmental issues. They also offer research-specific features such as advanced data collection methods, data filtering and preprocessing capabilities, and analytical techniques like sentiment analysis and network analysis. Moreover, these platforms foster collaboration among researchers, policy-makers, and stakeholders, prioritize ethical data practices, employ rigorous analysis methods, and provide real-time insights, all of which contribute to the generation of robust and timely evidence for decision-making and policy development in the realm of environmental change. Most social media platforms provide API to access data without requiring a subscription or payment. Some examples of such tools include:

  • Twitter APIFootnote 3: The Twitter API allows developers to access and retrieve public tweets and related metadata. It provides different endpoints and functionalities for data collection, such as searching for specific keywords, retrieving user timelines, and accessing real-time streaming data.

  • Facebook Graph APIFootnote 4: The Facebook Graph API enables access to public posts and data on Facebook. It allows researchers to retrieve public posts from pages, groups, and public profiles, as well as associated engagement metrics.

  • YouTube Data APIFootnote 5: The YouTube Data API allows access to public videos, comments, and related metadata on the YouTube platform. Researchers can collect data on videos related to environmental topics, user interactions, and engagement metrics.

  • Reddit APIFootnote 6: The Reddit API allows retrieval of public posts and comments from Reddit. Researchers can access discussions, threads, and user-generated content related to environmental discussions or specific subreddits.

  • Although these tools provide access to public data, they may have limitations in terms of data availability, historical data access, and rate limits imposed by the platforms. In addition to data access API, some freely accessible tools are also available for public users to collect data, including:

  • NCaptureFootnote 7 and NVivo:Footnote 8 These software tools, developed by QSR International, enable researchers to collect, organize, and analyze social media data alongside other qualitative data sources. They provide features for coding, visualizing, and interpreting data, facilitating in-depth analysis of social media content related to environmental issues.

  • Netlytic:Footnote 9 Netlytic is a web-based tool that allows researchers to collect and analyze social media data from platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. It provides features for data collection, text analysis, network analysis, and visualization.

  • TAGS:Footnote 10 The Twitter Archiving Google Sheet (TAGS) is a free tool that enables users to collect and archive tweets based on specified search queries. TAGS is built using Google Sheets and the Twitter API, and it offers features like automated data retrieval and analysis.

4.2 Tools and Applications for Social Media Data Analytics

As social media platforms become increasingly integral to public discourse and sentiment, the importance of analyzing the vast amount of data they generate is critical, particularly in the era of environmental change. Here, we outline some key tools and applications that facilitate this analysis.

Text and sentiment analysis tools are used to understand the sentiment and topics being discussed on social media platforms. They help researchers analyze social media text data to derive public sentiment and opinion on environmental issues. VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner) is a popular tool for sentiment analysis, particularly well-suited for analyzing social media text (Hutto and Gilbert 2014). It is a lexicon and rule-based sentiment analysis tool that is explicitly crafted to analyze sentiments in social media contexts (Hu et al. 2021). Other examples include RapidMiner (Verma et al. 2014) and NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit) (Loper and Bird 2002).

Network analysis tools are essential to understand the structure and dynamics of social networks. They can help identify influential users, detect communities, and understand communication patterns, providing insights into how information about environmental issues spreads and evolves over time. Gephi is a popular open-source network visualization and analysis tool (Bastian et al. 2009). It is very user-friendly and supports various types of networks, including social, biological, and Internet networks. Gephi allows for dynamic and hierarchical graphs, and supports a variety of layouts, as well as provides statistics and metrics pertinent to network analysis. NetworkX is a Python library used for creating, manipulating, and studying the structure, dynamics, and functions of complex networks. NetworkX provides data structures for representing different types of networks, or graphs, and has many functions and algorithms to analyze these networks (Hagberg et al. 2008). Other network analysis tools include Cytoscape (Shannon et al. 2003), Pajek (Batagelj and Mrvar 2002), and igraph (Csardi and Nepusz 2006).

Machine learning tools are increasingly used to analyze social media data. They can be employed for sentiment analysis, topic modeling, predictive modeling, classification, clustering, and anomaly detection, among other tasks. This can provide deeper insights into public perceptions and behaviors regarding environmental issues. BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) is a state-of-the-art deep learning model for natural language processing (NLP), including question answering, sentiment analysis, and more (Devlin et al. 2018). Some powerful open-source libraries for machine learning and deep learning have been widely used in this domain, such as TensorFlow,Footnote 11 Scikit-learn,Footnote 12 Keras,Footnote 13 and Pytorch.Footnote 14

Given that many environmental issues are inherently geographic in nature, geospatial analysis tools are essential to analyze location-based social media data. These tools can provide insights on spatial patterns and variations in public sentiment, behavior, and interaction related to environmental issues. ArcGIS,Footnote 15 Google Earth Engine,Footnote 16 and QGISFootnote 17 are prominent examples of such tools. Some open-source tools are also available to conduct geospatial analysis and mapping, such as GeoPandas,Footnote 18 geemap,Footnote 19 and Folium.Footnote 20

5 Toward Actional Design in Environmental Change

5.1 Limitations and Challenges

While social media platforms provide emerging and exclusive data sources to track and monitor people’s opinions, discussions, and perspectives on environmental change, existing studies have common limitations and challenges that should be addressed in future action plans to effectively cope with environmental change in practical terms. First, the limited Internet penetration and social media activity in certain geographical areas and among specific social groups result in a selection bias. This bias is particularly pronounced among low-income individuals, those with lower levels of education, the elderly, children, and non-smartphone users (Vu et al. 2021). In many instances, this bias can influence the representation of the silent majority, as people’s opinions are influenced by active and influential figures such as political leaders, celebrities, and environmentalists who are prominent in their respective fields (Anderson 2011). To address this bias, it is important to conduct surveys or questionnaires that encompass a wider range of populations across different age groups. This will help calibrate and validate the findings obtained from multiple datasets, ensuring the accuracy and generalizability of the results.

Second, it is important to acknowledge that people’s awareness and perspectives on environmental change may be distorted when considering data obtained from social media platforms (Maria and Maria 2020). This is because the data primarily come from users who are inclined to share specific views and are generally more active in contributing to social media discussions. Conversely, individuals with ambivalent opinions may be less active on social media. At the aggregated population level, opinions regarding environmental change are more likely to attribute responsibility for participating in political activities related to environmental protection to developed countries rather than developing or underdeveloped nations (Mavrodieva et al. 2019). This tendency can be influenced by the level of freedom of speech and social institutions, particularly in countries where individuals are encouraged to engage in the political process and express their views on policies (Osterrieder 2013). Therefore, it is crucial to include more global communities that discuss environmental change in non-English speaking nations and in developing or underdeveloped countries. By doing so, a more comprehensive picture can be obtained, enabling the development of actionable strategies in different geographic contexts.

Third, the discussions surrounding climate change on social media tend to focus more on current events rather than past occurrences or future projections. While conveying the urgency of climate change has been effectively incorporated into current actions (Moser and Dilling 2011), there is a growing need to strategically incorporate efficacy or hope appeals into messages. These appeals can help inspire action and engagement with climate change campaigns. Furthermore, public perceptions and engagement are heavily influenced by socio-economic realities and cultural constructs, such as religiosity, hierarchy, gender, age, education level, and social class (Mavrodieva et al. 2019). However, detailed information regarding the socio-demographic profiles of social media users is often absent or difficult to obtain (Correa 2016). This highlights the importance of establishing correlations between the frequent consumption of online information shared through social media and public engagement across various social groups. It is also crucial to address social inequality and injustice, which are significant factors in shaping environmental change actions.

5.2 Future Directions for Actional Environmental Science

5.2.1 Highly Targeted Communication and Dissemination

Highly targeted communication and dissemination play a critical role in actionable environmental science, ensuring that relevant information reaches the right audience and motivates them to take meaningful action (Quevauviller et al. 2005). By tailoring the message to specific groups, stakeholders, policymakers, local communities, industry professionals, or specific interest groups, the communication can address their unique interests, preferences, concerns, and values via conducting research or surveys in social media space to gain insights into the target audience’s knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to the environmental issue at hand. This understanding will help in crafting messages that resonate with their interests and motivations. Furthermore, engaging visuals (e.g., captivating images and videos), examples and discussions, as well as sharing valuable resources, can significantly enhance the message’s reach and facilitate the active participation in relevant environmental communities in the content delivery. It also needs to diverse the communication channels (e.g., community newsletters, local radio stations, environmental conferences, or targeted email campaigns, in addition to social media platforms) in order to ensure that the chosen channels have high engagement and are accessible to the intended audience. Last but not least, fostering two-way communication is important to encourage feedback, questions, and dialogue from the target audience. This can be done through online forums, live chats, public meetings, or surveys – actively listening and responding to their concerns, as well as providing clarifications in the context-specific environmental actions.

5.2.2 Collaboration and Networking with Individuals and Organizations

Collaborating with social media influencers, environmental organizations, and activists can be a powerful way to amplify messages about environmental action and reach a wider audience. By leveraging the influence and reach of these individuals and groups, the message can resonate with a larger number of people and inspire them to take action. First, the action can start with identifying the right social media influencers who align with the environmental cause and have a substantial following via looking for influencers who have demonstrated genuine interest and engagement with environmental issues in the past. Second, reach out to the identified influencers, organizations, and activists through personalized messages by offering mutual value and developing a content strategy that aligns with the environmental message (e.g., videos, articles, infographics, or interactive campaigns). Third, leveraging multiple platforms can maximize the reach and impact of the message, for example, utilizing the influencers’ existing platforms (e.g., Instagram, YouTube, or Twitter) as well as the platforms of the environmental organizations and activists involved to increase cross-promotion. Last, it needs to regularly monitor the collaboration’s progress and measure the impact on reach, engagement, and audience response, possibly through data monitoring and tracking to adapt the strategy if needed to ensure maximum effectiveness.

5.2.3 Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science

Crowdsourcing and improving citizen science in actionable environmental science hold immense importance for multiple reasons. They enable broader participation and engagement, democratizing the scientific process and allowing individuals from diverse backgrounds to contribute their observations and knowledge (Somerwill and Wehn 2022). This inclusivity helps bridge gaps in data collection, particularly in remote or underrepresented areas, and fosters a deeper understanding of environmental challenges. Furthermore, citizen science generates vast amounts of data, expanding the scope and scale of research efforts. Involving a large number of participants allows for data collection at levels unattainable through traditional scientific methods alone. This extensive data collection leads to more robust analyses and a comprehensive understanding of complex environmental issues. Citizen science also helps build trust and collaboration between scientists, environmentalists, and the public, bridging the gap between academia and society (Somerwill and Wehn 2022). The abundance of user-generated content facilitates online campaigns or challenges, fostering a sense of community and inspiring collective action. Looking ahead, the future direction for citizen science in the context of actionable environmental science involves embracing technological advancements to further enhance data collection, analysis, and dissemination. Mobile applications, sensor networks, and wearable devices offer opportunities for individuals to contribute to data monitoring and respond rapidly to environmental changes effortlessly. Integration with artificial intelligence and machine learning can aid in data quality control, pattern recognition, and predictive climatic modeling. By advancing citizen science in these directions, we can harness the collective power of individuals and communities to effectively address pressing environmental challenges.

5.2.4 Real-Time Monitoring and Response

To facilitate crowdsourcing and citizen science in actionable environmental science, it is crucial to enhance real-time data monitoring and response to environmental events and policies. This involves improving data collection, analysis, and sharing processes. The involvement of a large number of individuals and communities allows for the collection of vast amounts of data from various locations and perspectives, encouraging active participation in environmental stewardship. Crowdsourcing facilitates the pooling of resources and expertise, enabling collaborative analysis that leads to more robust and reliable results. Platforms like AirNow, Earthquake Track, Global Forest Watch, Ocean Observatories Initiative, Global Reef Tracker, and Water Data for the Nation exemplify successful initiatives in this regard (Dong et al. 2015). The diverse perspectives and knowledge contributed by social media users and broader citizens help uncover patterns, trends, and insights that might have otherwise been overlooked. Additionally, sharing the data and findings openly promotes transparency, accountability, and collective learning in environmental actions. This enables scientists, policymakers, and the public to access and utilize the information, fostering evidence-based decision-making and catalyzing effective environmental action.

5.2.5 Engaging Stakeholders and Mobilizing Support

Engaging stakeholders and mobilizing support in environmental actions are critical for creating a collective impact and driving positive change. The key stakeholders in social media, including representatives from local communities, government agencies, industry, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions, have a vested interest in the environmental issue at hand. Purposeful recruitment and retention of stakeholders should be mutually beneficial, with clear expectations regarding costs (e.g., time and effort) and benefits (e.g., influence and results) to avoid engaging stakeholders without a specific purpose (Wesselink and Hoppe 2011). Conducting stakeholder analysis provides insights into their perspectives, motivations, and concerns regarding the environmental issue. Measurable actions are essential to link stakeholders’ contributions with specific environmental objectives or deliverables, clarifying when and how to engage with which stakeholders. For example, in online environmental campaigns, stakeholders should be provided with tools, resources, and training to actively participate in environmental actions. Capacity-building workshops, training programs, and educational materials can empower them to contribute effectively. Continuous evaluation and adaptation are necessary to ensure the effectiveness of stakeholder engagement efforts, allowing for sufficient feedback to improve campaign strategies.

6 Conclusion

In the era of digital communication, social media platforms play a significant role in shaping public perceptions and actions related to environmental change. Through these platforms, we have an unprecedented opportunity to sense public awareness, counteract misinformation, and promote accurate and impactful environmental messages. Harnessing these platforms and the tools available for data collection and analysis can lead to actionable environmental insights, informing strategies and policies for effective environmental change. However, the presence of misinformation is a significant challenge that requires sustained efforts in counteracting strategies and the promotion of media literacy.

Overall, understanding and leveraging the potential of social media platforms is crucial for addressing environmental change. The collective action from individuals, influencers, governments, and researchers can create a powerful momentum toward environmental sustainability. As we continue to navigate the complexities of the digital era, it is our shared responsibility to ensure that social media serves as a force for truth, engagement, and positive action for our planet.