Abstract
The current biodiversity crisis is caused by human activities, and, therefore, behavioural and social changes regarding human actions are critical for biodiversity conservation. To achieve these changes, we need effective communication. Social media has become a widespread and powerful tool to communicate conservation. However, two barriers have hindered its potential in contributing to conservation changes. The first barrier is the misconception that merely informing people is sufficient for conservation communication. While social media can help debunk the misconception by promoting social media engagement and enhancing the understanding of the audiences, there is a lack of knowledge about the current communication practices and a lack of empirical evidence on how to improve the engagement and understanding of the audiences. The second barrier is the Western-centric bias in research dominance concerning the disciplines of conservation and communication, which is highlighted by the limited research effort in systematically exploring cultural influences on conservation communication.
Using snow leopard, the least popular of the otherwise popular big cat group, as a case study, this thesis fills in those research gaps by describing the current communication landscape of snow leopard conservation on social media, evaluating the communication effectiveness, exploring the influences of culture on the effectiveness, and finally experimenting and applying the findings with specific audience groups. Ultimately, the thesis aims to enhance the understanding of how social media is used in conservation communication and to offer practical recommendations for effectively communicating issues about biodiversity conservation across different cultural contexts.
As part of this research, social media data were collected from Twitter and Weibo using keyword searches. Social listening, social network analysis, and natural language processing were applied to portray the communication landscape of snow leopard conservation on the two platforms. Interviews were conducted with conservation NGOs, the key actors identified, to further investigate the use of social media and the evaluation of its effectiveness in practice. Based on the interview results, the engagement metrics of social media platforms and the level of outreach were used as the measure of communication effectiveness, and factors contributing to a higher effectiveness were revealed by modelling with the social media data collected.
Then, to address the Western dominance pattern and identify the influence of culture, two national cultural frameworks were introduced, namely Hofstede s six cultural dimensions and Hall s high-low context, and their moderating effects on the emotional appeals of the text and visual characteristics of snow leopard images were investigated. Finally, a survey was conducted to examine the practical application of the findings from previous chapters with a finer understanding of audience preferences in relation to both cultural and demographic characteristics. Audience preferences for text or image of the experiment social media posts about snow leopard conservation were explored, as well as preferences for the amount of background context and the presence of eye contact in snow leopard photos. Within the frameworks of hope and fear appeals, the thesis studied the effectiveness of the experimental posts in evoking these emotions and generating real-world conservation intentions under the influences of demographics and culture.
The thesis represents the first such comprehensive exploration into the social media communication landscape of an endangered species, establishing the foundation for future research on promoting biodiversity conservation through digital communication. This research pioneers the application of national cultural frameworks in conservation communication, bridging the gap between the Western-dominant conservation narratives and the largely marginalised voices from the snow leopard range countries. The findings of the thesis highlight the critical need for tailoring conservation messages for diverse audiences and provide suggestions for best practices in cross-cultural social media communication to achieve better conservation outcomes.