Our Goal
Emily, Molly and Christina are three women with three different focuses–PR/Business/Networking, Science/Biology/Health and Fashion/Merchandising/Textiles, respectively. Within their specific focuses they have all recognized the power of the Green Movement and have therefore declared the following statement as their final research project question…

How has the media and new technology advanced the Green movement from scientists and activists, to a vast audience in mainstream America?


Within this framework, they will ask:

  • What is the science of the Green Movement? Where did it begin? Where was the “spark” in interest? How has it grown to help the medical field? Are hospitals investing in sustainability? How so?
  • How has it evolved into the realm of business? Where do we see it the most? How popular is sustainability in the corporate atmosphere? Is it recognized as part of this “New Economy”? How can American Green business trends teach different economies across the globe?
  • How has the fashion world responded to this trend? In what way do popular trends among celebrities reflect the Green Movement? How have they helped to create a “buzz”?

The Research Proposal
Introduction:

The Green Movement is a hot issue with many groups today.  It is almost impossible to turn on the news, open a scientific journal, or walk down an isle in any store and not to hear or read about some issue regarding the environment. How has the media and new technology advanced the Green movement from scientists and activists, to a vast audience in mainstream America?  The answer to this simple question is not quite as straightforward.  Although the movement has affected almost every aspect of life today, three specific areas will be examined.  First, how science influenced the Green Movement and how did this movement start.  Secondly, how it evolved into the realm of business and what is it doing to shape the future of the global market and economy.  Lastly, how we see it in everyday life, especially among celebrities and fashion trends.

By researching these facets of the Green Movement we are examining how effective new media and technology have been in furthering a positive cause.  In concluding that using these means were successful in communicating and evolving a “trend” to a “movement” then perhaps other causes and trends that are just as important can learn how to use this technology effectively.  Insight into this will show how influential media and technology are on different groups of people and how it has even gone so far as to effect legislation and policy making.  With further research, the use of technology in the Green Movement can potentially be used as an example of what to do or not to do to address an important issue in today’s media crazed society.

Our study intends to measure the influence of new media technology on the Green movement.

Literature Review:

The green movement is a familiar topic in society today. Everyone is aware of new “green” efforts locally, nationally, and globally. Our research serves to investigate the spread of the green movement and how to keep the movement going and gaining momentum through new media technology. Our research fits with existing knowledge in that everyone has heard of this movement if even just in passing. The movement has extended and translated into new scientific and medical research, new promotions, and new common trends. Anyone can be sent a daily text message or email about a new green tip or new green product. Our study wants to measure the impact of these new things in our world.  The Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center released its 2005 findings stating that the world is moving toward better environmental sustainability, but factors like natural resources and population density are big variables for each.  This study also calls out the “leaders and laggards” which inspires action in the political realm.  Penn State has released its national recycling statistics with correlations to real life energy savings that the everyday citizen can relate to. The Environmental Protection Agency has many studies and actual programs to encourage sustainability through legislation, improved business practices, and day-to-day life.  FedCenter is an important resource in the political realm, as it tracks specific ‘green’ legislation.  PopSustainability reflects pop culture in environmental sustainability today with striking statistics and polls on what people are saying on the streets about going green. Sustainable Style offers input for designers and merchandisers in the fashion industry on how to make their efforts more ‘green’ and accepts their input to share with the world. GreenBlue offers a forum on sustainable textiles and a plan for a Sustainable Textile Standard in the industry. Environmental Leader reports that environmental sustainability reporting is being used as a public relations tool, and its positive and adverse effects. The World Bank provides an overview of sustainable development and its social, economic, and environmental challenges. These sources all employ the use of new media to get their message across, whether it be through the use of blogs, online chat rooms or message forums, or text alerts for new green technologies.

Our research illustrates the reach of the green movement into the medical, scientific, political, and popular culture; answering questions like “Where did the green movement begin?”, “What has it done for these specific areas and for the every day citizen?”,  “In which area is the green movement most effective?” , and “How is new media influencing the green movement?” These questions will show the effect the green movement has had on not only these specific fields, but how it has also broken in to become a part of main stream America.

Using this information, we can study how main stream American youth access new media for their green endeavors.

Methodology:

In order to obtain and interpret data that is relevant to our research question, we will issue a number of surveys to students at West Virginia University as well as conducting interviews of those who have been involved in the Green movement on campus. The first surveys that will plan to conduct will seek to discover how relevant the Green movement is to them, and how they have seen it evolving. We plan to use an equalk number of males and females ages 18-24.  This style of sample will likely be more effective in determining how many students on campus are actually aware of the movement. As far as specific questions, we plan to have participants rank (on a scale of 1-10) the “buzz” about the Green movement on West Virginia University Campus, in the state of West Virginia, in the United States, and in the entire world. We will also ask which professional areas they feel as though the Green movement is most relevant, and give the options of business, fashion, and science. After the findings have been collected we will be able to find qualitative and quantitative data of which we can produce graphs and figures that will effectively convey the “buzz” of the Green movement. The survey will ask how students use new media in reference to the green movement. Do they receive emails from a green website with tips to go green? Do they regularly access any green blogs or websites? Do they receive text alerts from any green media outlets? These questions can help us asses their use of new media. We can also ask which field do they see ‘green’ most progressive in, the fashion industry with sustainable fabrics and practices or the medical field with new sustainable products and procedures. The second form of data collection that works for our research question is interview, as it will give us an opportunity to talk to those who are very knowledgeable in the movement and who will be able to provide us with key inside information as well as guidance. One of the people we plan on interviewing is the individual on WVU’s Student Government Association who is in charge of the sustainability platform, and who has been working hard to spread the word around campus through various fundraisers. Another individual is the head of SustainU, a national organization working to promote sustainable practices across many college campuses in the US. Interview questions will range from how these two people are working to spread the Green movement, to how successful they feel America’s cumulative Green efforts have been and whether or not they believe the movement has staying power. Hopefully we will be able to compare the responses of these two interviews in order to get an idea of some trends within the movement. As a whole, these methods of collecting and analyzing data will provide us with useful insight to the growing Green movement on both a university and national scale.

Survey/Results

This is the actual survey that was administered to 73 participants on November. The survey group was made up of women between the ages of 19-22 who attend WVU and are members of the Kappa Kappa Gamma national sorority.

The Green Movement in New Media

How often do you hear about Green technology through a social networking site like Facebook or Myspace (this includes advertisements)?
-Once a week or less
-Twice a week
-Three times a week
-Other, specify ____________________

Do you subscribe to any online mailing lists about Green innovations?
-Yes
-No

If it were available to you, would you purchase or subscribe to an iPhone application or text alert on “everyday ways” to go Green?
-Yes
-No

Why/Why not? ________________________________________________

Have you ever attended an event which promoted Green causes where invitation was delivered over email or a social networking site such as Facebook or Myspace?
-Yes
-No

Have you ever discussed Green causes over a new media outlet (IM, Blog, Twitter)?
-Yes
-No

If you have encountered the Green movement in any outlet of new media, what industry was it in?
-Business/Public Relations
-Fashion Merchandising
-Science/Biology
-Other, specify _________________________

Summary of Survey Findings

How often do you hear about Green technology through a social networking site like Facebook or Myspace (this includes advertisements)?
-Once a week or less: 41
-Twice a week: 15
-Three times a week:12
-Other: 5
Specifically: Never

The percentage of people who had heard about the Green movement on social media once a week was 56%, while 21% had heard of it twice a week, 16% three times a week, and 7% had never seen the Green movement presented on new media. Although we originally allowed for the “Other” option as a way for participants to further describe their encounter, a number of them specified “Never” as an answer under this category. The percentage of participants who answered “Other” (7%) can therefore be combined with the first category to equal 63% of the sample group surveyed that had encountered Green causes through new media technology once a week or less. These statistics show that the majority of those surveyed had very rarely seen Green causes promoted on a social networking site; however, the question does not allow for any other sort of new media to be taken into consideration. Due to the specific nature of this question we would likely reword the original question or create another to find out if participants had seen Green represented in any other outlets of new media.

Do you subscribe to any online mailing lists about Green innovations?
-Yes:13
-No: 60

18% of those surveyed said they were currently subscribed to a mailing list that updated them about Green news, but an overwhelming 82% said they did not.

If it were available to you, would you purchase or subscribe to an iPhone application or text alert on “every day ways to go Green?”
-Yes:22
-No:51

30% of the participants said that if they had the opportunity to subscribe to a sort of Green news service through their cell phone they would, but 70% said they would not. For this question we also asked why they answered yes or no, and provided space for them to specify this. A number of them mentioned that they would subscribe to this sort of alert “because the environment is important (6%)”, “because recycling is important” (2%), “because it sounded interesting”(6%) and “because it is helpful information” (4%). Reasons why some answered they would not want to subscribe to it were because “I don’t want to pay”(19%), “I don’t have an iPhone” (34%), or “I don’t have time to be bothered”(29%). These responses showed us that maybe to better survey this sort of information, our question should not have specified the type of phone they could get updates on, and just have made it more generalized.

Have you ever attended an event which promoted Green causes where invitation was delivered over email or a social networking site such as Facebook or Myspace?
-Yes: 23
-No: 50

31% of participants said they had attended an event which promoted Green causes where they had initially heard of the event through new media sources, while 69% of them had never participated in such event. In comparison to the other questions, this proved that social networking sites were the new media outlet that our survey group, members of generation Y, had noticed Green promotion.

Have you ever discussed Green causes over a new media outlet (IM, blog, Twitter)?
-Yes:8
-No: 65

In terms of discussing Green events or causes over new media, such as a blog or Twitter, only 11% of those surveyed had and the vast majority of 89% had not. This question revealed to us that the survey group was not using this sort of social media to initiate a conversation on a cause—these results were somewhat disappointing for our generation.

If you have encountered the Green movement in any outlet of new media, what industry was it in?
-Business/Public Relations: 30
-Fashion/Merchandising: 21
-Science/Biology: 21
-Other: 1

This question sought to see in which specialization the participants had noticed the green movement in these sorts of new media outlets or in general. 41% had heard of Green within the realm of business and public relations, 29% in fashion and merchandising, and 29% in science in biology. Only one individual (1%) said they had heard of Green in a different concentration, and specified that as “never”.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the data that we collected showed us a number of things.  The first conclusion that we came to was that those who were previously interested in the Green movement are using new media and technology to get their hands on more information and to help further the cause. Supporters are using the technology to connect with other supporters but are not using it to effectively reach out to people that are not already knowledgeable or involved in it.  The supporters of the movement are more involved but those who are not involved are not targeted.  The data from the survey also showed us that those who are not active in the Green movement genuinely do not care about the information or the movement and therefore perhaps targeting this population would be useless for the supporters of Green.

Overall, we were disappointed in the use of new media and technology in furthering the ideas of the Green movement.  With over 34,000,000 pages on Google relating to “green causes”, the information is out there and readily available but it is up to the supporters to make market it better and up to the people to use the research and current technologies.  It seems that people are often preoccupied with the “social” aspect of social networking and often forget about its capabilities as a research tool.

In conclusion, although new media has only been effective in bringing Green causes to those who make the effort to find them, it has definitely helped in bridging the gap between scientists and students. The ways in which Green had spread into the mainstream was evident in all three of our major categories—business, science, and fashion.  For instance, our group does not believe that Kappa Kappa Gamma would have had such a significant amount of individuals who had heard about the Green movement without new media.

What we would do differently:

If we were to continue this study, there are a few things we would modify. Although we wanted our first survey to measure the student’s use of new media in relation to the green movement without briefing them, we now feel that if we better defined the parameters with which we expect the survey participants to answer our questions, we would have gotten more specific and representative results. Also, finding experts involved with Green movement to answer survey questions in respect to their usage of social media to promote their cause would be another avenue to explore. As it stands now, we feel our sample is representative of the college population; however we feel that in further research we could further diversify our survey participants. A larger group would have garnered more results and a larger pool to pull findings and draw conclusions from.

Future Research:

In terms of future research, we feel that it would be beneficial to look into the differences between the different types of new media separately and their effect on the movement. Some users prefer notifications by email, and are more likely to check and respond to email than to facebook. These users tend to be the users of the ‘email generation’ who have used email since its debut. Others prefer to receive their notifications via facebook or twitter social networking sites because they check these outlets more than their email. These users tend to be around college age. The contrast between the email vs. facebook users, and the different generational preferences would be other realms available for study. We have also found that it would be helpful to have a longer research timeline for this study. Due to the newness of the Green movement and social media, both are now just beginning to be widely used and discussed. Therefore, if we could follow this growing trend over a longer period of time we could more effectively track the used of new media and its effect on the Green movement.

In terms of future research, we feel that it would be beneficial to look into the differences between the different types of new media separately and their effect on the movement. Some users prefer notifications by email, and are more likely to check and respond to email than to facebook. These users tend to be the users of the ‘email generation’ who have used email since its debut. Others prefer to receive their notifications via facebook or twitter social networking sites because they check these outlets more than their email. These users tend to be around college age. The contrast between the email vs. facebook users, and the different generational preferences would be other realms available for study. We have also found that it would be helpful to have a longer research timeline for this study. Due to the newness of the Green movement and social media, both are now just beginning to be widely used and discussed. Therefore, if we could follow this growing trend over a longer period of time we could more effectively track the used of new media and its effect on the Green movement.

Annotated Bibliography:

Burns, Ursula M. “Is the Green Movement a Passing Fancy? – BusinessWeek.” BusinessWeek – Business News, Stock Market & Financial Advice. 27 Jan. 2009. 13 Oct. 2009.

This is an article written by the President of Xerox, a popular printing company who would be especially pressured by the Green activists to treat their waste and materials in an environmentally conscious way. This article was especially helpful because it took into consideration the current state of the economy, and discussed factors and surveys which portrayed less and less corporations taking Green into consideration as a result of the economy. The author supports sustainable practices and environmental responsibility now more than ever, and shows readers statistical evidence that there is “no turning back,” and that this is no time to cut Green investments.

Davidson, Paul. “Getting gold out of green – USATODAY.com.” News, Travel, Weather, Entertainment, Sports, Technology, U.S. & World – USATODAY.com. 14 Oct. 2009. <http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-04-18-getting-gold-green_N.htm>.

This article surveys corporate America, from car dealerships to hotel chains, to see specifically how their implementation of Green practices has positively affected their bottom-line. USA Today is able to analyze the profits which each of these very successful companies have turned due to their use of Green, and addresses these positive figures in order to present an argument very much in favor of the Green movement. This article is different from others because it recognizes sustainable practices as having a large influence on the bottom-line, as opposed to just being used for PR, which is often why most companies are hesitant to initiate a Green program.

E. J. Woodhouse and S. Breyman. “Green Chemistry as Social Movement?”.  Science Technology Human Values, April 1, 2005; 30(2): 199 – 222.

This book discusses the green movement as a “social movement” and discusses how the sciences are feeding into this movement and helping the world face its environmental issues.  It mainly focuses on chemistry but discusses biology as well.

Franklin, C., (2008). Centre for Sustainable Fashion, Retrieved October 13, 2009, from http://www.sustainable-fashion.com/?page_id=15.

The Centre for Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion is a website and blog solely devoted to sustainable fashion in the design world. There are links to current sustainable designers and resources to help upcoming designers stay sustainable. The Centre also provides video links inside sustainable designers in London fashion week shows and behind the scenes of their design process. As with the Sustainable Style Foundation, they also provide resources to volunteer and become more involved in environmentally sustainable design practices.

Kamila, Avery Y. “Timberland goes beyond philanthropy: Building value for community and brand with volunteers.” Ethical Corporation 13 Feb. 2004: 8-11.

This article from 2004 discusses the ideas and theories of one of the pioneers of the Green movement within business, the CEO of Timberland, Jeff Swartz. His main argument for implementing sustainable practices into business is to gain brand loyalty of customers, as he has found that those companies who remain transparent and seem to really care about their community will be more productive in the long run. In the interview, Swartz discusses why most companies are worried about taking the leap into Green, mostly because of Green-washing and harsh critics, and tries to show them that this is the future—whoever takes quality action first will stand above the rest.

Luke, R., & Schmidt, S. (2003). Sustainable Style Foundation, Retrieved October 13, 2009, from http://www.sustainablestyle.org/.

This is a website four the Sustainable Style Foundation. It includes blogs, articles, and links to other sites dealing with sustainable fashion. These ideas range from where to buy sustainable fashion, how to help volunteer with SSF, and ways to get yourselves and those around you tuned in to your local ‘green’ environment. There are many different resources using new media to access, or make available these green ideas.

McDonough, W.,(2002). GreenBlue, Retrieved October 13, 2009, from http://www.greenblue.org/index.html.

GreenBlue is a website with ideas for redesigning human industry around the principles of nature. Its Sustainable Textile Standard article calls for a reform of the industry that started the Industrial Revolution. Starting with textiles, they aspire to change many industries from the base up.

Vuljevic, Suzy. “As green movement grows, more students choose environmental programs”.  The Michigan Daily.  September 8, 2008.  Retrieved October 12, 2009.

This article discusses how social networking and modern technology has been used to bring more young people into the green movement and how they are using these new technologies to spread their cause throughout the world.

Wagner, Joe.  “The Green Movement – Coming to a Data Center Near You”. <http://www.virtual-strategy.com/Features/The-Green-Movement-Coming-to-a-Data-Center-Near-You.html> May 22 2007.  Retrieved October 12, 2009

This article discusses the use of technology and new media in the green movement.  It explores the many forms of “Virtualization Green”.

Additional Literary Resources:

After we finished our survey we decided to look further into the literary sources online and in print to see if we could find any more information.

Fisher, G. (2009). Green New Media & Life Expo. Retrieved from http://www.greennewmedialifeexpo.com/

This website combines a variety of green/natural health businesses under one roof using new media technology to promote its exhibitors. The website incorporates bloggers, online video programming plus social media interactivity guaranteeing maximum exposure. The expo claims “Whether your business is green cleaning products, plumbing products, building products, health, beauty, fashion, food, energy & more, we will position you for ultimate success in a down economy and save you thousands of dollars in traditional marketing costs!” This site is promoting Green through new media in all aspects from science to fashion to everyday life and provides an outlet to put them all into the market to mass amounts of people through the boom in new media usage.

Ybarra, R. (2009). Green New Media on Blog Talk Radio. Retrieved from http://www.blogtalkradio.com/green-new-media

Green New Media Radio provides information on the latest news, products, businesses and services in the green industry. It provides on demand episodes and coverage of Green events, such as the Green New Media & Life Expo.

ASDA,. (2009). Green Awards. Retrieved from http://www.greenawards.co.uk/categories_x_16/categories_x_16/best_green_new_media_award

The Green Awards website is a resource used to recognize Green efforts in the New Media realm. This recognition will help to further promote the Green cause in the New Media universe, bringing it more attention and more interest.

Mitchell, D. (2007). Can Green Make Green?. New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/business/21online.html

This article discusses one company starting up its Green New Media efforts but also comments on the trendiness now accompanied with ‘Going Green’ in both personal and business settings.  It discusses the issue of the blogs being run by environmentalists, for the eco-concerned and how this does not generate new interest, just circulates information around those already interested. The article also discusses the business side of Green ad sales and web publishing.