Environmental Change Communication in The Digital Age: Social Media, Misinformation, and Mobilization among University Students in Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Social media has rapidly changed how university students receive, understand, and react to information on environmental change. Digital platforms offer a space for environmental awareness and public engagement, but misinformation can also jeopardize trust in such platforms and hinder action. This study aims to explore the role of social media in environmental change communication, focusing specifically on environmental awareness, misinformation, information credibility, digital literacy, and environmental mobilization among university students in Punjab, Pakistan. The survey method was adopted as the quantitative and cross-sectional survey design was adopted, and a structured questionnaire on a five-point Likert scale was used. The students of the universities of different regions of Punjab who were from both public and private universities were sampled. Descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, correlation, multiple regression, and mediation and moderation analysis were conducted. The results show that students have a high level of environmental awareness and often get environmental information from social media. But environmental mobilization is still relatively low, with a huge disparity between awareness and active involvement in environmental activities. The results also show moderate levels of environmental misinformation, such as inaccurate information, overstated information, contradictory sources, and manipulated visuals. Information credibility was found to be positively related to environmental engagement, and misinformation was negatively related to mobilization, but digital literacy was not. Digital literacy was not found to be associated with either environmental engagement or mobilization, whereas information credibility was positively related to environmental engagement and misinformation was negatively related to mobilization. Social media environmental communication and digital literacy partially mediated the relationship between environmental awareness and mobilization, and misinformation negatively affected environmental participation through environmental awareness. The study finds that social media is very effective at creating awareness about environmental issues and also, to a lesser extent, effective at inducing collective action towards environmental issues, but not very effective at sustaining the action. To close the awareness-action gap among the youth in Pakistan, digital and environmental literacy can be reinforced, the credibility of the online environmental communication can be enhanced, and interactive campaigns can be designed to promote action offline.