Presenter(s): Katie O’connor − Environmental Science, Economics
Co Presenter(s): Maya Vigil, Makena Dandley, Simoan Waldron, Yue Liu, Jackson Darke, Katie Robison, Kelsey Maass
Faculty Mentor(s): Peg Boulay, Kaelyn Polick-Kirkpatrick
Oral Session 4CN
Research Area: Social science
Our mission is to interact with local 16-24 year olds to raise awareness of the local impacts of climate change and encourage citizen action in mitigating it in Eugene. Through research on the most effective ways to communicate climate change issues to members of the community, we have prepared a social media campaign to engage citizens. Through use of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, we have developed strategies that can involve the community in climate-friendly actions by presenting the cost-effectiveness of these actions. We will use tabling events to target community members of Eugene and University students to promote education and prompt public engagement on the issue of climate change. To track success, we will keep count of how many people are viewing/interacting with posts, tabling events, and surveys. This project provides several benefits for the local community including reducing the impacts of climate change, limiting individual’s carbon footprints, and introducing cost-effective lifestyle changes. We hope our project will educate the local community on climate issues and increase citizen involvement in climate change mitigation by inspiring cost effective lifestyle changes that benefit the environment. We will present our social media framework, strategies, and methods for evaluation in a presentation following the conclusion of the project. It’s our hope the results we collect can be useful for the City of Eugene as they move forward in the fight against climate change.