Welcome to the eighteenth OneOcean briefing, and our first briefing of 2021! This briefing looks at legacy media coverage and social media conversation over January 11-24. The briefing analyses coverage of the ocean, the climate and biodiversity and compares the effectiveness of these issues in permeating mainstream media.
The full OneOcean Response Room weekly briefing and supporting analysis is available only to Flotilla members. If your organisation is interested in receiving this briefing, is not a member and interested in joining, please email travis@oceanprotect.org
Summary of findings
The data from the past two weeks show a high volume of coverage on the climate, followed in volume by biodiversity and then ocean. As an issue, biodiversity loss appears to have been effective in tying itself to the climate crisis issue, while achieving recognition and prominence as an environmental threat in its own right. This is particularly the case in coverage of high-level political action to address the issue of biodiversity loss.
Coverage of the climate crisis featured a notably wide range of different voices calling for action, from sportspeople to the arts sector to Finnish grannies. Ocean coverage generally appeared to have had fewer compelling voices and stories in this period, with an absence of articles examining the human impact of ocean degradation.
Some evidence from social media analysis indicated that ocean messaging received a high level of engagement when coming from ‘climate messengers’ in this data gathering period. Analysis around different combinations of message and messenger will continue in our social media listening work this year.