The first step is asking the right questions.

I’ve got approximately ten weeks to hammer a whole lot of vague-ish thoughts about the environment and politics into a proposal for my senior honours thesis. I’m going to be spending some blogging time trying to sort through the questions I most want to try to answer, and theoretical ways that I might answer them. If any readers exist, comment is welcome.

The issue that immediately sprang to the forefront of my mind when thinking about a possible thesis topic – admittedly, when challenged by the professor in the first session of the preparatory course at 8:30 in the morning – was to examine what, if any, impact on environmental attitudes and behaviours results from participation in social networks. I’d been thinking about this in the context of Facebook apps like the “lil green patch” people keep inviting me to, which purportedly saves some rainforest every time I send ten people a virtual plant. On the one hand, I believe that the net benefit of this app for the rainforest is nil, but on the other hand, could the act of sending the application invitations to friends raise enough environmental awareness to change behaviour? For example, does it lead to more recycling, or more careful use of one’s municipal composting service, or choosing to forgo buying something? If this app doesn’t do that (and I’m guessing the answer to that is indeed that it doesn’t), could others, and what would they involve?

How about participation in a challenge program like OneMillionActsOfGreen? While this isn’t what I’d call social networking in the sense of Facebook (and it involves traditional media as well as the internet), it does entail making an explicit statement about the kind of person one is, and a commitment to do something specific. Who takes up the challenge, and why? Do they follow through with it? Does that have an impact on their future behaviours? Why? (Do the kinds of behaviours that change as a result of participation have a significant impact on the wellbeing of the Earth?)

Similar kinds of questions are certainly looked at by psychologists, who’ve found that our beliefs about ourselves and the kinds of people we are, and our values, do influence our behaviour. Provided that the behaviour is relatively easy – for example, putting something in the recycling bin instead of the trash – the more I think of myself as a person who is concerned about the state of the Earth, the more likely I am to do it. If the behaviour is relatively difficult or costly – for example, choosing to take public transit instead of driving (assuming for the purpose that I live somewhere far from Toronto’s downtown), the relationship between attitude and behaviour is not as powerful. However, I would likely experience cognitive dissonance if I were to think about my choice to drive instead of take public transit, because my behaviour would be in conflict with my beliefs.

However, I’m not studying psychology these days; although I want to look at how social networking affects the behaviours of individuals, I’m more interested in what kinds of activity can actually change behaviour, and I want to look at what makes them effective. Is it the act of making a public commitment, or the sense that if so many people are participating, it must be a good thing to do? How much do social networking technologies promote participation in new social movements and why and how? Do people go from sending lil green patches to joining Greenpeace to voting Green (and will there be a subset chaining themselves to trees?)?

I think these may be the questions that I really need to focus on, because I want to explore the intersection of online social networking tools with environmental attitudes and behaviour, and the potential political consequences. Next up: how the hell do I operationalize that?

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