Saving the planet, one Instagram post at a time

In an article published for the i newspaper, which discusses social media strategies used by environmental campaigners to capture the attention of wider audiences, Dr Anastasia Kavada, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, commented on the role of celebrity influencers.

Dr Kavada explained that influencers can connect an environmental campaign with a new audience.

She said: “You may follow a model because you are interested in fashion, but then you will come across their post about the environment, and this is something you might not otherwise have thought about.”

On the other hand, Dr Kavada also noted that “a cute animal picture” can oversimplify a complex campaigning issue like climate change.

“If you think about climate change, visuals like that of a polar bear have become the symbol of that fight, but maybe you lose the complexity of a much more complicated issue.”

Read the full article on the i newspaper’s website.