Can Celebrities Help Stop Climate Change?

Welcome to 2016 — The Hottest Year on Record

2016 is already on track to becoming the hottest year on record, and changes in normal climate patterns are already well underway in many parts of the world.

While the dreaded 1.5 degree increase is almost a certainty, acting on climate change could greatly lessen the severity of the changes we’ve set in motion. The time to get creative is now.

Communication At Our Fingertips

Thanks to social media and the widespread infiltration of technology, our ability to seamlessly share information is at an all-time high. Rather than relying on newspapers or magazines, we can use each other as sources of information quickly and efficiently. We almost instantaneously learn what the President is having for breakfast and we can view live streams of both inspiring and horrifying events around the world.

With 3 billion people accessing the internet and with 1 in 4 Americans using online sources for news, our methods of communication have drastically changed. This astonishing aspect of how we live now represents a huge opportunity to redefine how we communicate important concepts and issues, like climate change.

The Ever-Elusive Oscar & Its Important Message

Many people know of actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who is probably most remembered by many for his early role in Titanic. DiCaprio has been nominated on five previous occasions for an Oscar and was never successful. After dozens of brilliant performances, on his sixth nomination, he won. And the internet rejoiced.

What’s spectacular is that Leo used what could be argued as one of the best moments of an actor’s career, as an opportunity to spread the message of climate change:

“Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this.”

There’s no doubt that DiCaprio is passionate and committed to raising awareness about climate change. But, can celebrities actually influence people in a significant way?

As it turns out, they can. In fact, they can even influence us on a neurological level.

Jennifer Aniston. Reading that name or looking at that photo may have just triggered a specific cell in your brain that only fires when you see or hear of Jennifer Aniston. Researchers dub it the Jennifer Aniston cell.

Your brain also has a specific neuron that only fires when you look at a family member like your grandmother — it’s usually associated with something you see over and over again.

So, as it turns out, yes, celebrities can influence us, even on a neurological level. 
 
 But, the question still stands, does a celebrity speaking out about a social issue make a difference?

The Impact of an Oscar Acceptance Speech

A team of researchers set out to study the impact of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Oscar acceptance speech on climate change related terms and searches on Twitter and Google (full article here). Based on their findings, it looks like celebrities can have a pretty astonishing impact.
 
 Let’s jump straight to the juicy bits. DiCaprio’s speech caused a 261% increase in Google search volume on the term “climate change” within one hour of his speech and maintained a higher than average search volume across climate change and three other search terms over the following four days. This was despite the very minimal news coverage (other than the live streaming) DiCaprio’s speech incurred.

The impact of his speech was also reflected in a 636% increase of tweets with the term “climate change” or “global warming” on the day DiCaprio spoke compared with the day before.

For some context, the researchers also compared activity on these key words with other environmental events such as Earth Day and the recent United Nation’s Conference of the Parties (COP) and DiCaprio’s speech was 5.3 and 3.2 times larger than Earth Day and COP, respectively.

Leo’s acceptance speech also became the most tweeted Academy Awards moment, surpassing Ellen DeGeneres’ record-breaking selfie.

Making Climate Change Normal

I think we all can agree that climate change needs a facelift. It’s become a politicised topic that gets an unfortunate representation due to a huge lack of understanding about its implications. It’s complex in nature and can’t be “seen”, we can’t always see CO2 building up in the atmosphere like we can pollution in a lake.

It needs a sexy new name with a stupidly simple message that is clear, to the point and inspires people to do their part to lessen their impact so we can all live long happy lives on our planet for generations to come.

It’s possible climate change can’t be sexy… but maybe it doesn’t have to be.

Society is ruled by “norms”. We accept certain elements of life as “normal”. In western society, it’s normal to flush a toilet, use a phone to communicate with someone, or shake hands. And luckily, things that are “normal” don’t always have to be things we understand. Everyone uses a smart phone and accepts it as is without ever knowing the magic behind what makes it work.

This is where celebrities come in.

For decades, companies have been utilising the power of celebrity endorsement to promote all kinds of products and services from cologne to airlines. Big companies are no stranger to harnessing celebrity power, however climate change organisations are far behind when it comes to marketing, particularly when it comes to funds.

Celebrities can play an important role in spreading important messages and issues facing our society. Humans are extremely social creatures, and observing others plays an important role in forming our actions later on (2).

Coordinating Efforts to Create New Norms

A key takeaway from the researchers looking at the impact of DiCaprio’s speech is that we need to better coordinate climate change campaigns to coincide with the momentum that celebrities bring. The impact of Leo’s Oscar acceptance speech is just one of many instances where celebrities can influence society towards a particular topic.

We need to use the resources of connection that are literally at our fingertips to bring about powerful change for an issue threatening our species.

I’m no expert in creating new norms but I suspect if we could harness the power that celebrities have to make overalls cool again… then we’re on our way to making climate change sexy.

References

(1) Leas, E. C., Althouse, B. M., Dredze, M., Obradovich, N., Fowler, J. H., Noar, S. M., …Ayers, J. W. (2016). Big Data Sensors of Organic Advocacy: The Case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Climate Change. PLoS One, 11(8), doi: doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0159885

(2) Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Towards a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215, doi: 10.1037/0033–295X.84.2.191