Narrative Persuasion of Environmental Leaders on Social Media: Case Studies of Two Language Educators

Abstract

Lack of pro-environmental behaviours from the millennials can be detrimental to current attempts to preserve the environment. However, these millennials do trust their opinion leaders who consist of social influencers. Thus, social influencers play an important role in projecting pro-environmental behaviours and persuading their followers in embracing pro-environmental behaviours. Pro-environmental behaviours can be elicited from the millennials from their opinion leaders. The paper employed a qualitative case study to investigate social influencers’ narrative persuasion in eliciting pro-environmental behaviours from their followers. Two social influencers who were language educators participated in the study. These social influencers had more than 1000 followers on their social media accounts. Data were taken from online observation and semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Peer debriefing was used to increase trustworthiness. The findings indicated that these social influencers used narrative transportation, identification and emotions to persuade their followers to exhibit pro-environmental behaviours. Each informant had the environmental issues that they championed and had a deep personal attachment with the issue. They were more concerned with engaging fellow citizens to be more responsible consumers and conserve the environment. They were aware of local and global environmental concerns.