{"id":32628,"date":"2023-08-17T18:01:52","date_gmt":"2023-08-17T16:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/86775999-923e-4c0e-a413-2e5715e5726e"},"modified":"2023-08-17T18:38:26","modified_gmt":"2023-08-17T16:38:26","slug":"hundreds-of-thousands-of-environmentalists-and-academics-leave-twitter-after-musk-takeover","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/hundreds-of-thousands-of-environmentalists-and-academics-leave-twitter-after-musk-takeover\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds of thousands of environmentalists and academics leave Twitter after Musk takeover"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Alex Hughes\n <\/p>

Published: Thursday, 17 August 2023 at 16:01 PM<\/p>

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Mirroring the departing of the colourful blue bird to make way for a gaping black X, huge numbers of environmental users are making their departure from the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.<\/p>

A team of researchers at Pomona College, US, tracked the six-month period after Elon Musk took over the website. In this time, nearly half of users who identified as environmentally oriented were no longer active on the website<\/a>.<\/p>

Called \u2018Environmental Twitter\u2019 by the team of researchers, this group of people were defined as those who post on the topic at least once in a 15-day period.<\/p>

\u201cWe saw that there was a vibrant community engaging in discourse around environmental topics. This then raised the question of how this community may be impacted by changes to Twitter\u2019s governance,\u201d says,\u201c Charlotte Chang<\/a>, the lead researcher and an assistant professor of biology and environmental analysis at Pomona.<\/p>

Chang and her team compared use of the social media platform among 380,000 environmentally interested users to a 458,000-user control group of those who discussed the 2020 US presidential campaign via Twitter.<\/p>

The drop-off in comparison to these politically active users was significant. Only 20.6% of these users were no longer active on the platform.<\/p>

It wasn’t just environmentalists that were leaving the site. Industry analysts reported that over one million users were no longer active on the platform<\/a> just a few months after the takeover, a doubling of the previous baseline.<\/p>

This research builds on previous work by the same team. They examined environmental Twitter, identifying six different personas<\/a> based on interests in biodiversity conservation, public lands or climate change mitigation.<\/p>

More than two-thirds of these users interested in environmental issues were considered \u2018generalists\u2019 with a broad interest in the field.<\/p>

The team behind this research raise concerns over the loss of environmentalists. For advocates and researchers, it becomes a threat to the way they analyse and discuss research in a public setting and raise attention to their research.<\/p>

Since Elon Musk\u2019s takeover of Twitter, the website has seen drastic changes \u2013 most recently with its rebranding to X. The X team has also published large amounts of source data, changed rules on verification, and made major changes to the way that news is distributed.<\/p>

Concerned about the loss of a platform to discuss environmental issues, Chang and the research team are recommending tracking and reporting on what new platforms are attracting support amongst environmental users.<\/p>

A number of platforms have gained traction since Elon Musk took over Twitter, including Mastodon and Threads \u2013 both platforms that Chang and her team include in their recommendations to track.<\/p>

They are also aiming to raise concerns to X and those in charge of government policy, hoping to keep conversations around environmental issues going.<\/p>

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