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Evaluating the Efficacy of Mirth as a Communication Strategy in Natural Resource Conservation
Student Name
Department of Community Health, National University
COH 611: Research Methods
Dr. Lori Bednarchik
Due Date
Evaluating the Efficacy of Mirth as a Communication Strategy in Natural Resource Conservation
Published research that addresses the implications of social media strategy on conservation attitudes and intentions is lacking. From a practical standpoint for communication specialists, understanding how to most efficiently and effectively employ the myriad tools available is crucial. More important than a mere familiarity with the functionality of a medium, is the ability to strategically deploy messaging—finding the right balance between familiarity and novelty—that will motivate the desired response from the target audience (Thompson, 2017). This is especially true of social media. The Multilevel Model of Meme Diffusion (M3D), which generically analyzes meme efficacy, provides a useful, scalable starting point, by evaluating the combined roles of homophily and heterophily in meme propagation. Homophily, which is the tendency to seek out similarity, reinforces familiarity and reduces the degree of uncertainty felt about a subject. Elements of heterophily, the tendency to be attracted to difference, create enough dissonance to engage curiosity (Spitzberg, 2014; Ming, 2015). Memes, however, are a highly specific genre, and comprise only a fraction of social media posts relevant to conservation.
Because of the noted scarcity of conservation-specific social media research (Büscher, 2016), communicators in the field often rely on tangential data, and trial-and-error to help rationalize their engagement strategies. However, applying findings relevant to single-issue advocacy groups may not always be effective. Environmental organizations address a broad range of topics (Hestres, 2018) which creates unique communication challenges demanding further investigation to understand how best to approach them. Thus, the purpose of this inquiry is to examine the efficacy of positively valanced social media content as a strategy to engage and educate audiences in natural resource conservation.
To this end, this study begins by reviewing research examining new media in activism and conservation, and humor as a communication strategy in a variety of applications. These findings are extrapolated to evaluate the potential utility and application of mirth and positive affect in social media posts as mechanisms to engage audiences, not only with natural resource conservation organizations, but also to educate, and further promote conservation attitudes and intentions.
Literature Review
The following section will synthesize the existing literature on this topic. This includes: 1) social media in conservation advocacy; and, 2) humor.
Social Media in Conservation Advocacy
The mediation of nature is a double-edged sword. Authors such as John Muir, touting the richness, magnificence, and need for preservation of pristine wilderness, inspired increased visitation (Philippon, 2005). Once a privilege of the aristocracy, today, leisure excursions to undeveloped spaces are accessible to all classes (Elliot, 2006). A casual scroll through Instagram testifies to the popularity of capturing the trophy photograph documenting a wild adventure. This is not a new phenomenon. As early as the 1970s, the impact of a growing number of visitors on wild spaces was recognized (Elliot, 2006), but the advent of new media presents novel engagement and education opportunities to help curtail this impact (Levitt, 2002).
Today, the Internet—and more so social media—enables immediate connectivity, not only through shared photos and tales of exotic places, but through heretofore unattainable discourse (Levitt, 2002). An essay published in 2002 posits “the Internet may be regarded as a turning point in the struggle to conserve and protect the earth” (Scherr, 2002, p. 207). This has proved true over the past decade, as natural resource conservation groups have quickly adopted web-based technologies to engage and educate diverse, worldwide audiences in an effort to effect change.
The Internet is a powerful persuasive tool for conservationists when employed strategically (Levitt, 2002). For example, when considering environmental justice, policy, and activism, political orientation plays a key role in interpretation and acceptance (Clayton, 2018). A more conservative propensity is to believe environmental protection practices should be the decision of individuals, and a more liberal perspective is that conservation should be a societally governed, with individuals each doing their share (Clayton, 2018). As a result, legacy environmental groups, in earlier decades, operated in a political climate which required them to utilize ‘insider tactics’. These strategies included lobbying directly to government officials, targeted media buys (Hestres, 2018), and direct individual communication to audiences deemed likely to support their cause and their bottom-line. New media, however, have expanded outreach horizons, enabling contemporary organizations to gather user-specific data, target and reach more diverse, expanded audiences, on a personal level.
The challenge therefore becomes determining how to best engage the increasingly diverse audience, when tried-and-true, traditional communication methods, such as page-long appeal letters are viewed, especially within conservation groups, as a waste of resources. With more than three billion users worldwide, social media offers alluring possibilities (Newberry, 2019). Among the extant literature evaluating new media and conservation activism, one discovers advice encouraging the facilitation of public discursive communication, and the necessity of using timely, teachable moments to build awareness and engage emotions to incite action (von Essen, 2017; Taylor, 1995). Equally relevant is a caution against the overuse of spectacle to the distraction of the core issue (Pezzullo, 2016).
Additionally, since human beings do not exist merely as individuals, but as part of a greater system, societally, biologically, technologically, and ecologically (Sun, DeLuca, & Seegert, 2017), they must act in ways conducive to supporting that system. This notion is reinforced by the networked structure of social media, which allows for immediate (inter)action. This is significant because, unlike traditional video and print media, engagement with online content is not only consumed, but through liking, sharing, linking, and commenting, it is modified and co-produced. This changes the nature of the experience (Büscher, 2016), allowing the individual to feel a sense of belonging, participation, and ownership in the process. Taken together, these findings present a strong case for the strength of social media as an outreach tool for conservation advocates.
Humor
Humor—psychologically comprised of cognitive, emotional, and expressive components—serves a wide array of interpersonal social functions (Martin, 2006). Because of this, a significant body of literature exists examining how humor operates as a persuasive communication strategy. In leader-follower relationships, benign humor has been demonstrated to enhance reciprocity-of-liking effects and enhance follower likelihood to adopt positive feelings toward leadership (Pundt, Fröhlich, & Nerdinger, 2017). In social issue engagement, humor helps to create a bond with the audience, prevent emotional burnout, and reduce negative affect in response to the message (Branagan, 2007; Moyer-Gusé, Tchernev, & Walther-Martin, 2019). Though these studies are not specific to social media strategy, their findings suggest broader applicability for conservation organizations utilizing humor as a tool to enhance activism among their followers.
Humor and Activist Engagement
Some researchers address humor only as a benign form of communication, but many distinguish between benign and aggressive, or positive and negative, negative forms. These are not necessarily opposites, and possess different attributes and outcomes (Pundt et al., 2017). Examples of aggressive humor which may deprecate the subject include “infotainment” news, satire, and sarcasm (Martin, 2006). These have been demonstrated to produce negative affect in the message recipient, and can induce a diminished perception of the subject matter (Baumgartner & Morris, 2006), a desire for disassociation, and reduced perceived credibility of the purveyor (Pundt et al., 2017). This suggests that an activist communicator wishing to engender a positive attitude toward their message, create a sense of belonging, and demonstrate institutional credibility, will want to avoid the use of negative humor in their outreach messaging.
Further, the paradoxical nature of humor makes it difficult to quantify, and a challenge to use successfully as an engagement tool. Not everyone has the required “instinct” but when the audience is known and understood; timing and construct are appropriate; and the message is sufficiently original (McIlheran, 2006), amusing messaging has strong potential to engage the viewer. Humorous ads garner more attention than those which contain no humor (Nabi, Moyer-Gusé, & Byrne, 2007), and that humor also has the ability to implant permanent ideas into the viewer’s psyche (Branagan, 2007) which may indicate humor aids in information retention. Getting the viewer’s attention and ensuring they sufficiently retain key message components is essential to the mission of conservation groups.
Humor and Persuasion
Environmental advocacy organizations are not only interested in engaging an audience and educating the members regarding their mission, but also in persuading those same parties to alter their intentions and act to change their behavior in a desired way. For those organizations which employ humorous content as a means to engage and educate, additional messaging strategies may be required to make the leap to persuasion. Humor creates inclusive opportunities (Branagan, 2007), but research has not yet conclusively demonstrated that it serves as a positive reward to reinforce persuasive messaging. Moreover, while humor may operate as an unconditioned stimulus (Markiewicz, 1974), increases liking (Nabi et al., 2007), and media has demonstrable effects on environmental beliefs (Moyer-Gusé et al., 2019), there is no conclusive connection between humor and persuasion. Though some evidence suggests that low involvement individuals may be conditioned by humor for future persuasion (Nabi et al., 2007; Yoon & Tinkham, 2013), humor may cause high-involvement individuals to react negatively, resulting in a backfire effect for an overt persuasive attempt (Nabi et al., 2007; Moyer-Gusé et al., 2019). Accordingly, knowledge of the target audience and understanding the desired outcome—engagement, education, conditioning, and/or persuasion—is critical when deploying humorous content. More important, perhaps, is understanding how component(s) of humor influence audience engagement. This study focuses on the emotional component of humor: mirth.
Humor vs. Mirth: The Critical Distinction
Though research on the role of humor in engagement and persuasion comprises a significant segment of the literature reviewed and elaborated upon, for the purpose of this study, the term “humor” itself is ill-fitting, being broad and nonspecific. General audiences will accept the Oxford English Dictionary definition of humor: “with reference to action, speech, writing, etc.: the quality of being amusing, the capacity to elicit laughter or amusement. Also: comical or amusing writing, performance, etc.” (2019). However, as has been discussed, researchers offer a deeper insight to the concept of humor, having identified at least 11 categories thereof, which can be differentiated based on their intentions, (Martin, 2006) and which may include both positively and negatively valanced communication (Pundt et al., 2017).
To eliminate the ambiguity of “humor” and accommodate the need for succinct specificity, this study employs the terms “mirth” and “mirthful”—a “pleasurable feeling; enjoyment, gratification; joy, happiness” and “of a thing: entertaining, amusing; affording mirth” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2019)—to characterize the emotional gratification inspired by positively valanced social media content. This is justified by findings associated with the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions which maintains that, unlike negative emotions which narrow one’s conception of possible actions, positive emotions function by broadening a person’s openness to thoughts and actions beyond their typical scope (Frederickson, 2007). Research further suggests positive emotions not only enhance creative problem-solving; build and maintain relationships and feelings of commitment; and encourage mutually beneficial outcomes (Martin, 2006), but are also functionally distinct (Strohminger, Lewis & Meyer, 2011). Mirth, specifically, has been associated with bolstering interpersonal bonds and group unity and rewarding cooperative endeavors to achieve goals which would be otherwise unattainable (Martin, 2006). This is especially relevant to organizations seeking to unify a large audience to engage in a specific, shared cause or course of action.
At a time when climate change is under scrutiny, rain forests are burning at unprecedented rates, light pollution is blocking out the stars, and the food chain is being contaminated with plastics, one might readily conclude amusement and frivolity have no place in wide-spread, rapidly shared conservation messaging, but the research suggests otherwise. Based on these findings, the following research question is posed:
Research Question: To what extent is the use of mirth in social media posts an effective means for engaging audiences in natural resource conservation efforts?
To examine the efficacy of mirthful content as an engagement tool; its ability to impart new information; and the role of mirth in translating engagement and education into action, the following hypotheses will be tested:
Hypothesis 1: Attitudes toward mirthful messages are different than those toward negatively valenced messages.
Hypothesis 2: Mirthful messages and negatively valenced messages will differ in information credibility.
Hypothesis 3: Mirthful messages and negatively valenced messages will differ in message credibility.
Hypothesis 4: Mirthful messages and negatively valenced messages will differ in argument strength.
Hypothesis 5: Mirthful messages and negatively valenced messages will differ in information quality.
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