Earth shorts: the role of journalists and social media content creators in redefining environmental journalism

This panel discussion will explore what social media content creators and journalists can learn from each other about making potentially complex environmental topics accessible to their audiences. Furthermore, are they bound by a common set of rules and procedures?
In the past two decades, the shift from traditional to digital media has transformed how news and information are disseminated, accessed and experienced. More recently, new challenges in the information space have emerged: people are increasingly getting news and information from social media rather than news websites or apps; climate/environmental news avoidance is growing; and mis/disinformation on climate change and other environmental themes is widespread. These challenges are particularly salient to Asia, which currently accounts for 60% of the world’s social media users.
This change is occurring at a time when the public’s trust in the media is dwindling and there is growing polarization. Information consumers, particularly the youth, are turning to social media content producers for information they trust, as they see them as authentic and relatable information sources. Also, social media has become a major source of mis- and disinformation, especially about climate change.
Drawing on consultations conducted with social media content producers, they tend to have a strong sense of what matters to their followers and can produce content that engages with them. However, social media content producers, especially those who depend on their followers for their livelihoods, may face pressure to produce content. Unlike journalists who are trained, social media content producers may not have the reporting and fact-checking skills. They may also not view the information they produce as a public good and lack understanding of the potential influence they have. Coupled with time constraints, this may lead to the dissemination of misinformation.
In view of these new challenges, Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) wanted to explore the collaboration of journalists and social media content creators to strengthen the quality of environmental information on social media platforms, by increasing the skills, knowledge and resources of social media content producers posting on these platforms.
In Asia, EJN is scaling up its pilot Earth Shorts, which aims to increase social media content producers’ knowledge of climate change and their access to credible environmental data sources and thematic expertise. It also aims to strengthen the capacity of social media content producers to create engaging climate change information in short-form video content format for social media.
Since 2004, EJN has been working to increase the quality and quantity of environmental journalism worldwide. Using a model that combines capacity and network building, EJN has now more than 25,000 members worldwide, has trained 16,000 journalists and produced around 15,000 media stories on a wide range of environmental topics.
Organised in association with the Internews Earth Journalism Network.