Youth and Social Media: Exploring new space for raising attention on Climate Breakdown.
Today listeners, readers and viewers are shifting the way they consume information. Many young people in highschool 6/10 of the in Urban centers have a Facebook account or can access Twitter, Instagram or YouTube. The definition of social media by mere this would be interactive content sharing platforms.
Benefits of Social Media in creating awareness about a climate crisis.
- Enhances how we communicate our climate messages, social media platforms can enable Photo, video and live streaming functions. This can provide visual evidence of occurance of events.
- Through interaction can facilitate exchange of knowledge and ideas that can be replicable in other areas.
- Sharability of other information platforms or data tools like Keeling Curve or meteorological services is easy because social media can be embedded in these web portals.
- For Campaigning;
At Fridays For Future, we use social media to offer engage with public and rallying people to join the movement and demand for urgent climate action.
Organisations like the African Climate Reality Project have developed digital media tool kits to help social media user have organised content guiding the campaign.
- Advocating Space;
As a climate generation we are supposed to be innovative and learn how digital technologies can help us amplyfy our voices and also accelerate solutions sharing.
Why use social media;
Traditionally Africa and Uganda at large we been used to radio, television and newspaper. A few magazines also came along the way to provide content space to fashion, lifestyle, politics, business, entertainment among others. Today we are faced by humanity's biggest threat to existence and how do the digital tools like social media to help us tell it to others and inspire action.
Platforms like Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp an instant messaging App have revolutionalised access to information and now with phone/web apps and websites such is the digital social networking potential. It is important that as young people born in a breaking down climate generation we should bring out into light the problems that face our us now. Why we can we can't give up on this, it's an ongoing effect heading into the future, therefore solutions sharing and collaborative efforts exchange space is key.
Much harm to our environment in our local communities is going on, activities like defforestation, poor land use, wetland degradation, charcoal burning, plastic dumping, air pollution, water pollution and we can expose the dangers of these activities and what alternatives we can be put into practice.
Lets put to good use our social media platforms, share your your efforts to combat climate change, create content that others can learn from and also content that inspires them to participate.
Climate Action Must Be Our Duty.
To be continued,
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