Meatless Munchin 4Change

Meatless Munchin 4Change:

Both, Maddi and I, have a passion for good healthy foods as well as working with the environment. Throughout the years, we have been cultivating different crops in different places. Maddi has been working with the Eckerd Garden Club and I have been growing crops back at home in Puerto Rico. We already knew about the importance of meatless healthy eating habits and the benefits it can bring to decrease climate change. With this general knowledge, we have designed this project to specifically educate on how a plant-based diet and eating less meat can contribute to the decrease of global deforestation. 

The audiences chosen are the environmentally concerned Generation Z and young Millennials. We believe the level of concern ingrained in these audiences can easily encourage them to change lifestyle habits in order to decrease climate change. These targets are action oriented so with the right education and encouragement they could have a significant effect on helping change national policies. In the United States, 44% of Americans fall into the alarmed and concerned attitude towards climate change audience (Stoknes, 2015). Both, Generation Z and young Millennials, are very active in the Instagram platform and that is why we decided it was the perfect platform to make the account. According to Statista publisher, J. Clement: “As of April 2020, 30% of global Instagram audiences were aged between 18 and 24 years and 35% aged between 25 and 34 years”. This means that 65% of Instagram’s audience are the project’s target market. We intend to grab the audience attention through colorful and fun imagery which is another reason why Instagram is an ideal platform for this initiative. A social media platform will also allow us to maintain on-going communication and relation with our target, something that would be much harder in non-digital mediums.

The account was named ‘Meatless Munchin 4Change’. This name combines both the main communication concept and a “call to action”. “Meatless Munchin” refers to the vegan recipe posts and “4Change” refers to the posts that “call out” how the meat industry contributes to climate change.  The account reached to a total of nine posts on its profile. Some posts contain information on greenhouse gasses and deforestation, and how they affect climate change, while the other posts promote the MeatlessMonday challenge and offer vegan recipes.

The three posts that communicate how the meat industry contributes to climate change are full of color and visuals (attention-grabbing tactics), but they also contain scientific information about how a lower meat consumption can help fight climate change. The information is transmitted in different ways. One of the posts focuses on how the demand for meat causes an increase in methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (which contribute to the increase of greenhouse gasses); another post talks about how deforestation will decrease if more people lower or eliminate their meat consumption. A final post educates through scientific research on how the meat industry contributes to deforestation, greenhouse gasses, and even water loss. Through these three posts, we applied our Climate Change Communication class knowledge on how many scientific communications are not effective with general audiences. It was important to be aware that scientific methods can be seen as a cultural adaptation design to oppose a person’s emotionally comforting desire on their beliefs (Weber & Stern, 2011). The posts are made to transmit the scientific information in a more simple and fun way.

Four posts in the account promote MeatlessMonday and vegan recipes. These posts contain colorful visuals and healthy meatless options. One post communicates information about non-meat protein choices with detailed nutritional information. Another post has a recipe for loaded quinoa tacos with a simple step by step instructions. The third post contains information on how livestock contributes to the greenhouse gasses as well as promotes two other Instagram accounts of vegan chefs that post vegan recipes. The fourth post also promotes MeatlessMonday, but instead of posting recipes, we wanted to hear from our audience and what meatless dish they would consume that day. The objective of these posts was to show the audience that by adapting their lifestyle they could be part of helping climate change. Like we mentioned in class, traditional media and the news focus mostly on communicating the problems and they lack on providing possible solutions. This is a big part of the reason why current civilization has waited to take action towards climate change, people hear about it but do not see it nor know what to do (Hertsgaard & Pope, 2019). We wanted people to take some sort of action and provide them with practical options on how to start.

The other two post are completely different from one another. In one of the posts, Maddi talks about the story behind why she become vegan. She starts her story by talking about how she learned about the effects that factory farming has on the environment. Then, she went on to explain how she thought it was hypocritical of herself to love the Earth, but at the same time, contribute to an industry that harmed it. We believe that many of our followers felt a connection with her story and hopefully it inspired them to change some lifestyle habits. As learned in class, storytelling is an effective communication strategy. According to Stoknes (2015): “We need new stories to make sense of the ongoing boisterous transition towards the greening of technology, business, and culture.” We believe this personal story can have a strong effect in influencing our audiences. Finally, the last post was meant to bring positivity and hope to people that care about climate change. We believe that we needed to spread positive messages to people that are working towards changing their lifestyle in order to help lower their carbon footprint. It is critical to take into consideration the importance of mental health and the goal of having a better and realistic future (Marris, 2020). People that are starting to care about the environment should be encouraged to never give up.

Overall the project was a success. Even though it was hard to get our followers to interact, we received many likes on every post and a few comments on some. We realized how hard it was to get our followers to interact, but it was not impossible. One of the account’s main successes was being featured on ECOS story for its veggie menus. Furthermore, we applied many communication strategies learned in class in order to achieve our goal of effectively promoting meatless diet and how this could influence improving climate change. “Meatless Munchin 4Change” was a success and we hope it can evolve into another medium educating people on simple ways to take care of planet earth.

Clement, J. (2020, April 24). Instagram: age distribution of global audiences 2020. Retrieved fromhttps://www.statista.com/statistics/325587/instagram-global-age-group/

Forgrieve, J. (2018, November 2). The Growing Acceptance Of Veganism. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetforgrieve/2018/11/02/picturing-a-kindler-gentler-world-vegan-month/#55c6e29a2f2b

Hertsgaard, M. & Pope, K. (2019, May 6). Fixing The Media’s. The Nation Company. Retrieved from https://moodle.eckerd.edu/moodle_20192/pluginfile.php/39742/mod_resource/content/0/Hertsgaard%20and%20Pope%202019.pdf?forcedownload=1

Marris, E. (2020, January 10). How to Stop Freaking Out and Tackle Climate Change. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/opinion/sunday/how-to-help-climate-change.html?fbclid=IwAR3fewB6N1ezAnrHuDcaECg64e9rOok_sVPYiWG3n09BasRtA_TMLW5KUKw

Stoknes, P. E. (2015). What we think about when we try not to think about global warming: toward a new psychology of climate action. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing.

Weber, E. U., & Stern, P. C. (2011). Public understanding of climate change in the United States. American Psychologist, 66(4), 315–328. doi: 10.1037/a0023253