47-M Twitter views: Youth dominate climate change action #NowPH

Raisa Serafica

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47-M Twitter views: Youth dominate climate change action #NowPH
Climate action ambassadors including 'AlDub' star Alden Richards, weatherman Kim Atienza, and athletes Alyssa Valdez and Kiefer Ravena are key influencers in the #NowPH conversation

MANILA, Philippines – Who are at the forefront of the clamor to combat climate change?

A number of influential millennials and the youth, it seems.

The National Youth Commission (NYC) and the Climate Change Commission (CCC) with the support of the Embassy of France, USAID, and Friedrich Naumann Foundation on Tuesday, October 6, introduced an initiative to raise awareness on climate change – the #NowPH campaign.

#NowPH stands for “Not on Our Watch,” a youth-led campaign that aims to harness the collective power of the public in urgently calling on countries to act on climate change issues.

The campaign also seeks to gather a million pledges which will be submitted to French President Francois Hollande, who is presiding the 21st conference of the parties (COP21) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (READ: #COP21 climate action: 1 million voices from PH to Paris)

One of NYC’s partners for the advocacy, MovePHRappler‘s civic engagement arm, led a Twitter conversation during the launch of #NowPH. (READ: #NowPH: Youth urged to combat climate change)

Let’s take a look at the conversation, its leaders, and what netizens are saying about #NowPH and climate change.  

Social reach

To visualize the simultaneous community discussion online, we ran Reach, Rappler’s social listening tool. The program monitors keywords and hashtags in real-time, identifying who the social media influencers are and their corresponding roles in the conversation.

Based on the data, the offline discussion, attended by not more than 300 individuals, quickly spread online, reaching almost 700 unique authors on Twitter. In a span of 3 hours, coinciding with the campaign launch between 3pm to 6pm, #NowPH racked up 47,684,128 impressions on Twitter.

On Twitter, “impressions” means “the times a user is served a Tweet in timeline or search results.”

The discussion also introduced simple and concrete steps everyone can do to help fight climate change.

The hashtag also trended towards the end of the program, even overtaking other influential hashtags at the time like #AlDubTheDecision and #FelixManaloOpensTomorrow.

Influencers

We were also able to identify Twitter users who engaged in the conversation under 3 categories: broadcasters, linkers, and niche.

The broadcasters are responsible for connecting the conversation to a wider audience, keeping the conversation alive. MovePH, NYC Pilipinas, and NowPH_org were the top broadcasters in the online conversation.  

Staying true to their roles as “pillars of climate action,” actor Alden Richards of the #AlDub craze, TV personality SAM YG, weatherman Kim Atienza and athletes Alyssa Valdez and Kiefer Ravena emerged as the other key influencers in the online conversation.

In their top posts and mentioned tweets, they urged the public to take a decisive action against climate change. 

Linkers and niche 

The Linkers, identified by Reach as users who helped amplify the conversation to otherwise untapped communities, include Dingdong Dantes, Janine Gutierrez, the Climate Change Commission, CCC secretary Lucille Sering, and the French Embassy. 

Zooming into the data visualization, we were also able to identify the niche communities, or users with a smaller but highly engaged audience. 

These include MovePH editor Votaire Tupaz, writer Fritzie Rodriguez and actress Julie San Jose.

Another notable user is Quincy John, one of those responsible for amplifying the message to the #AldubNation niche community. 

The fun duo of Alden Richards and Maine Mendoza has a massive online community that consistently pushes #AlDub-themed hashtags to the top of Twitter trend charts.

Youth responds 

The data visualization of the #NowPH discussion showed two things:

  • How influential Filipino personalities effectively harnessed their popularity to promote fighting climate change as an advocacy
  • How the youth and the general public positively responded to the advocacy pushed by these influential Filipino personalities. 

#NowPH is a silver lining at a time when serious discussions like the fight against climate change seldom get the online spotlight they deserve.

The best thing about it is that the youth are leading the way. 

Check out what they have to say during the discussion:  

Join the movement! Submit your pledge on #NowPH and share your thoughts on the fight against climate change on X! – Rappler.com  

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Raisa Serafica

Raisa Serafica is the Unit Head of Civic Engagement of Rappler. As the head of MovePH, Raisa leads the on ground engagements of Rappler aimed at building a strong community of action in the Philippines. Through her current and previous roles at Rappler, she has worked with different government agencies, collaborated with non-governmental organizations, and trained individuals mostly on using digital technologies for social good.