Paper Title: Go Negative for Clicks: Negative Sentiment in Environmental Advocacy Emails Is Associated with Increased Public Engagement

Author(s) and Year: P. Sol Hart, Stuart N. Soroka and Dan Hiaeshutter-Rice, 2024

Journal: Environmental Communication (open access [link])

Keywords: Environmental advocacy, sentiment, public engagement, online communication, computer-assisted content analysis

TL;DR: This study assesses public engagement with emails from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) by looking at the relationship between opens and clicks, and the tone (negative to positive), of the message. Results show that negative tone led to increased engagement, though the discussion emphasizes that the sample (people subscribed to EDF emails) may be too narrow for the results to be applied to audiences with different values.

Why I chose this paper: In a risk communication class, I learned that simply giving people information about scientific topics like climate change rarely motivates them to engage with the issue (see: the flaws of the information deficit model). I believe we should always construct environmental communications with the goal of motivating people to engage with the issue, which is the basis that this paper uses to evaluate the success of messages.

The phrase “climate doomism” has appeared in articles from major publications like The Washington Post, calling out a problem in climate activism: pessimistic messaging that makes people lose hope for solutions. Fear can evoke overwhelming reactions that lead to apathy as a coping mechanism. Even famed climate scientist Michael E. Mann has said that doomism “has overtaken denial” as a threat to the movement. Though he elaborated, “[Doom] can be enabling and empowering as long as you don’t get stuck there.”

The Background

Despite the widespread condemnation of using negativity to communicate environmental issues, previous studies have shown promise in pessimism. In the introduction to “Go Negative for Clicks,” the authors cite a variety of studies that indicate negative information is more engaging to the public than positive information. However, the researchers also note that negative framing is more complex for environmental issues. Some studies show people jumping to doomist reactions from negative messaging (i.e, if we’re already so off course, why would I believe I can do anything to help?). Other studies have found the opposite—that optimism promotes complacency. 

With these contradictions in mind, the authors set out to answer the following research question: Is it more effective for organizations to use more hopeful, positive language when trying to get the public to engage with environmental issues, or information that has a more negative tone? 

The Methods

The authors of “Go Negative for Clicks” devised a study to assess how sentiment—ranging from negative to positive—related to engagement with emails from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Engagement was quantified by counting how many times emails were opened and how many clicks their links received. Recipients were all subscribed to EDF emails, which indicates their attitudes are likely aligned with the environmental movement. 

Researchers evaluated 2724 email campaigns for tone using the Lexicoder Sentiment Dictionary, an eminent database, and defined net sentiment as (positive words – negative words) / total words. For example, a word like “aggressive” is characterized as negative, while “friends” is positive. In addition, certain phrases like “will not” are used to indicate overall tone (negative) instead of the tones of the individual words (will = positive, not = negative). Engagement rates across millions of individual emails were calculated for each campaign. 

The Results

The researchers found that there was a strong correlation between negative net sentiment and engagement. Put plainly, negative messages consistently got more interaction than positive ones. This was also true when controlling for individual topics, which was important to look at because some campaign topics made stronger appeals to engagement than others. (The authors used “saving polar bears” versus “increasing recycling” as an example, though it is not clear which one is meant to be more engaging.) In summary, statistical testing showed that the correlation between negative messaging and engagement was significant both when individual topics were controlled for and when they weren’t (p < 0.05). It’s thus reasonable to conclude that negative tones in EDF email campaigns resulted in greater subscriber engagement. 

Though the significance of these findings is strong, the authors make it clear that the sample audience is not a good representation of the wider public. People subscribed to EDF emails are more likely to be politically engaged, and studies have shown that politically engaged people tend to be drawn to negative information, a phenomenon known as a negativity bias. The fact that engagement was only measured through opens and clicks is also limiting, as these metrics may not indicate some of the most desired outcomes, such as signing a petition or making a donation.

The Impact 

The large sample size and real-world nature of the data used in this study mean that directing negative messaging at a similar audience in the future would likely lead to comparable amounts of engagement. This strategy could be applied by practitioners to increase engagement from audiences like readers of sustainability publications, people who follow environmental activist social media accounts, or nonprofit email subscribers.

So, could environmental doomism be good, actually? The answer—like so many other answers in science communication—is that it depends. It depends on your audience, it depends on your goals, and it depends on the information being covered. Certainly, we can establish that negative messaging shouldn’t be written off in all scenarios since it was so effective here. Determining the role of negativity in communicating to other audiences, like climate skeptics, will be critical in future research. Overall, this article embodies what is hopefully a trend towards evaluating science communication efforts against actions taken rather than mere reach.

Written by Alex Music

Edited by Mariella A. Mestres-Villanueva and Madeline Fisher

Featured image credit: Photo by Markus Spiske: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-walking-on-street-2990647/