Environmental News Seeking and Sharing Behaviors of GenZ

Social media is important for sharing “sensational, sensitive, political, and causal information” in the digital world (Osatuyi, 2013). Climate change or environmental news seeking and sharing behavior is important to assess in order to promote collective action through individual’s perception of increasing their own social capital and helping communities affected by natural disasters in the real world. Younger people, GenerationZ, are said to be more open to using digital tools to engage in diverse conversations, engage with information and participate in civic and political action (Boulianne & Theocharis, 2020).We hypothesize that the diverse needs of GenZ based on their identity and psychological distance to natural disasters will significantly influence their information seeking and sharing behaviors through the passive and active use of social media and instant messaging applications. Social media and Instant Messaging (1) increase social capital, (2) provide affordance of aggregation, (3) and provide ubiquitous technology for GenZ users. Social Media possesses identity and social affordance critical for GenZ users who strive to increase their social capital. Critical Race theory is important in the emotional and participatory redesign of SM platforms, while featuring ways to connect users to relevant climate change information. Network Society theory is an important framework, across disciplines, that emphasize the significance of our qualitative research regarding the social media behaviors of GenZ.Master of Science (MS)School of InformationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/177320/1/Famuyiwa_Environmental News Seeking and Sharing Behaviors of GenZ_2023.pdfDescription of Famuyiwa_Environmental News Seeking and Sharing Behaviors of GenZ_2023.pdf : Famuyiwa - Main File for Final Master's Thesi