Effective Usage of Social Media for Dark Skies Awareness
Abstract
Social media has become a daily tool in our culture. Networks such as Facebook with 900 million active users and Twitter with 140 million active users make an ideal platform to create awareness. It helps to generate and share new content and enables multi-communication channels. This presentation will address how effectively social media can be used as an education tool to create awareness of light pollution. As a "green" focus becomes more important in our world the topic of light pollution is also rising as an important issue. Light Pollution affects many aspects of our world ranging from flora and fauna to the economic well-being of many industrialized countries. Mixed among the many important pollutants in our world light pollution can fall by the way-side, forgotten, but it is imperative to bring out awareness of this problem, especially since studies are beginning to show how by fighting light pollution we will also be fighting other pollution such as air pollutants. GLOBE at Night has combined social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter with its educational awareness campaign on light pollution to reach out to social media community. Currently our Facebook reaches citizens of twenty separate countries ranging from the Czech Republic and Peru to the United States and the United Kingdom. On Facebook our reach is estimated at over 800,000 friends of our fans. These networks help us to directly answer users' immediate questions and encourage participation in the GLOBE at Night campaigns. Important news on light pollution appearing in cyberspace is monitored regularly using Google Alerts and Twitter hash tags filters which gets posted regularly on our networks. Social media networking has become a tool for users not only for information about GLOBE at Night but also for information about the overall topic of light pollution itself. Many individuals and organizations struggle with the mass content shared in social networks. It is important to know where to look for the right content and what to share with whom. This presentation will highlight on; the importance of engaging in social media to gain and share new content, how to filter the right content, and best uses of social media to create an awareness of light pollution. We will discuss the proper ways to get the most use out of social media networking.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFMED13E..05H
- Keywords:
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- 0825 EDUCATION / Teaching methods