The climate crisis is underway, but in the USA, the public remains largely unaware and inactive. Humans are imperfect climate sensors, and many tend to see climate change as either a partisan ideology or a geographically distant threat. To connect the public to the nature around them and how it is changing, we have pioneered a data-driven science communication technique called the Witness Tree Social Media project (@aWitnessTree).
In 2018, a team of post-docs, communication specialists, and undergraduates installed sensors on one 100-year-old red oak tree (Quercus rubra) at Harvard Forest in central Massachusetts. Open-source computer code analyzes the tree’s sensor data continuously, and specific conditions (a heatwave, heavy rainfall) trigger real-time posts to Twitter and Facebook following four themes: phenology, climate, community ecology, and tree physiology. The bot can contextualize current data with archival data, creating monthly/annual summaries and comparisons to 55+ year climate baselines.
Since the project launched in July 2019, it has attracted 8,700+ Twitter followers, many of whom engage directly with the bot, which can respond with selfies and answer a predetermined set of questions.
The project is both an outreach tool and a research environment. Initial design of the bot’s messages sought to test a range of science communication approaches, through posts with multiple, randomized, categorical treatments – presence/absence of multimedia, four content themes, and data-driven or conversational diction. Twitter analytics quantify resulting public engagement.
Results/Conclusions
We analyzed 65 Twitter messages posted by the bot between July 2019 and February 2020, focusing primarily on Twitter Engagement Rate (the number of times a user actively engaged with a post by clicking, sharing, or commenting, out of the total number of times the post passively appeared in news-feeds). Average Twitter engagement per post (2.8%) exceeded industry standards for non-profit social media accounts by an order of magnitude.
Multimedia in a post increased Twitter engagement (p = 1.61e-08), a result that aligns with prior social media research. Dominant content theme had no impact on overall Twitter engagement but altered the frequency of user replies (p = 1.57e-05), with climate themes eliciting more comments per post.
A 2020 grant will pilot deployment of 3 new Witness Trees at environmental education sites in greater Boston. We will assess public engagement online and explore qualitative impacts of the technology on climate change teaching in the K-12 classroom. The network will also enable data analysis on tree physiology along a land-use gradient.