Tweeting Experience Report: The Earth Hour International Event

By: Tara Bekdache, Lara Kabbara, and Nourhanne Aoun

The Event:

The Earth Hour was an international event that took place on the evening of March 29, 2019 where cities, individuals, organizations and communities around the world turned off their lights for one whole hour as a show of solidarity and support to the environment and the need for energy conservation to decrease the impact of climate change on Earth’s well-being.

To that end, we teamed up to provide live coverage for the event using one of our team member’s account (@AounNourhanne ) on Twitter. We covered how the event unfolded in the Lebanese American University; the activities and initiatives associated with this event live from LAU’s campus starting 7:00 p.m of that day and until 9:00 p.m, using text, images and live video.

At LAU, a Yoga session during the event was organized by the instructor Diana Farhat, then a countdown started after which the lights were turned off at LAU as a show of its commitment to Earth Hour. The Environmental Club and the Athletic Club at LAU took part in the on-campus activities of the event. We took on Twitter to promote and report on LAU’s participation in this international event.

1. Researching social accounts (Twitter Handles relevant to the event)

Upon our research of social accounts relevant to the event, we used the hashtags #EarthHour #Connect2Earth #CandleLightYoga and #LightsOff to find these accounts on the global, regional and local. Among what we found were the following: On the global level, the relevant Twitter accounts were: the World Wildlife Fund (@World_Wildlife) which promoted the event focusing on how environmental experts around the world are working with scientists to explore the impacts of climate change. This account promotes and mentions other relevant accounts linked to its mission such as @MarineUAS @OneOceanExp @CAOceanAlliance, among others. Plus, the Earth Hour global account @earthhour which shared pictures of how the event was celebrated from around the world. There was also the UNICEF account (‏@UNICEF) which promoted inspirational moments and individuals (with a focus on children) as part of the celebration of earth hour. In addition, organizations such as Oxfam International (Oxfam) that promoted the various landmarks around the world that participated in the #EarthHour and how that movement is associated with Oxfam’s core mission. On the region level, we found the @Riyadh_Green account, which talked about the participation of the citizens of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in the #EarthHour initiative using the #Green_Riyadh project hashtag to raise awareness about saving the environment focusing on Riyadh’s role as a city. On the individual level, we noted the leading entrepreneur Richard Branson‏ @richardbranson who promoted the various solar energy and environmentally-friendly systems and projects that his business has initiated in line with the mission of the #EarthHour event. ‏Finally, on the local level, the account of the Lebanese American University @LebAmUniv and the Communication Arts department at LAU @LAUComm were active in promoting the event specifically focusing on LAU’s activities. Our choice of accounts was based on the relevance of their latest tweets, the description of the account page (it should represent a community, organization or prominent individual with a relevant mission to the event)

‏Audience research (who, where and what is most interesting to them)

Our primary audience were the students, faculty and staff members of the Lebanese American University. They were located in Lebanon and were interested in learning in what way was their institution demonstrating its commitment to this international event. Specifically, it was very interesting to them to see how LAU set itself apart in its involvement in the event through its on campus activities and relevant tweets from 7 until 9 p.m. Our secondary audience was the Lebanese public in general and namely those participating in the Earth Hour experience. Our audience was interested in reading tweets that exposed the on-campus activities being organized and the buildings that had their lights turned off through news updates in the form of text, images and hashtags.

Creating hashtag for the event coverage

For the event, we created the specific hashtag #LAUSavesThePlanet which was used in each of the tweets that we posted

Researching background information

Preparing visual material and to engage audience before and during the event included two images live from LAU campus that showed the images from the Yoga event: one showing the participants lined up and preparing to begin their session, and another image showing the candles that were lit when the lights were turned off after the countdown. The screenshots below from the account show the main Tweets:

In addition, we broadcasted a Live Video from the event using Periscope, a live broadcasting app that was linked to our Twitter account. The Tweet below shows the link to the live broadcast with the announcement “Lights Off”:

Workplan:

With regards to our workplan, we divided the tasks as follows: Nourhan Aoun was tasked with Tweeting live from the event, providing direct updates in the form of text, images and live video. Lara was tasked with researching the Twitter feed for relevant accounts using the right hashtags and qualifying the accounts to be included in the report (since not every account found in the search result was chosen). Finally, compiling, organizing and writing the report was a teamwork tasks which all team members participated in: Nourhan, Lara and Tara.

Self Assessment:

After reviewing the sequence and content of our tweets as they appeared in the time line, we notice that in terms of order, they do make sense: the first Tweet invited the target audience to “Join us” in celebrating the earth hour event, the second tweet explained how LAU will specifically take part in the event while the third tweet that followed invited the audience to stay tuned for more details, along with the relevant hashtags. Live tweets from the scene then followed. The first tweet included the time, location and the topic of the event. The second tweet elaborated further on the event’s details. The remaining Tweets were more specific in providing details: the name of the teacher involved, the exact location (AKSOB) and what exactly was happening (through live photos).

The first three Tweets announcing the event with all main details included

On the basis of the tweets, we were able to construct a comprehensive news story that explained to our target audience: what was happening, where exactly was it happening, why, in which context and who were the specific participants in the event. However, we believe that more information on the background of the international event (Earth Hour — its meaning, importance and relevance to LAU’s mission) should have been included in the Tweets. Some audience members may not have been aware of what Earth Hour was all about, and so a few Tweets giving a brief background in both text and images would have been helpful. Specifically, retweeting the tweet by LAU’s official account (shown below) would have helped in fulfilling this objective:

LAU’s official tweet explaining the Earth Hour event

The choice of visuals and media was based on their relevance and the clarity of the photos. Several photos were taken but only the clearest two were chosen to be uploaded, given the time of the even (evening with limited or no lighting available). No quotes were selected to be posted on our tweets, only tags to the LAU official account and descriptions of the pictures that were uploaded.

The responses we received on our tweets were limited: our tweets were “Liked” once and retweeted once. On average, they were seen by 30–40 individuals (Impressions) and had 2 engagements. Accordingly, we can conclude that our audience engagement strategy did not work out as effectively as we wanted it to, since people did not sufficiently participate or reply to what we tweeted.

Based on the above, having gone through the experience, we would have done things differently in the following ways:

1. Tagging specific individuals and accounts relevant to the event (including some of the participants in the Yoga session and the instructor as well) (engagement)
2. Including infographics that clearly explain the meaning and importance of the event (audience awareness)
3. Introducing a poll and asking the audience to participate (engagement)
4. Quoting people (participants and experts) and tagging them in our tweets (engagement)
5. Interviewing participants through our live broadcast (engagement)
6. Including shocking facts about the impact of climate change (audience awareness)

Grading Ourselves:

Based on the grading distribution, we give ourselves an 11/15 since:

• The choice of the event was meaningful and important
• The 5 Ws were reported through the tweets
• We used a combination of text and images
• Clear, keywords with appropriate grammar and style
• Finally, we were able to self critically assess our work and provide suggestions for improvement

However, there was limited effort put on creativity (engagement, experimentation, compelling and fun posts) and no specific quotations from people. This would have made our reporting efforts richer, more engaging and distinctive.