Retweeting #WorldEnvironmentDay: A study of content features and visual rhetoric in an environmental movement

Abstract

Much work has been done on the role and impacts of social media in social movements, but less attention has been paid to the use of content features such as hashtags and URLs, and visual rhetoric used in persuading and mobilizing in social movements. We address this gap by analyzing a sample of 1271 tweets during World Environment Day, a yearly and global movement to commemorate and promote awareness about the environment. We examine the impacts of content features and the use of three types of visual rhetoric (ethos, pathos and logos) on retweeting, as retweeting is a measure of retransmission and expressive participation in the movement. The use of URLs was positively associated with retweeting, but the relationship is reverse for hashtags and retweeting. Ethos was the dominant persuasion strategy present in the visual rhetoric, and the use of both Ethos and Pathos were significantly associated with retweeting.