Farmers are used to growing crops and producing other goods, but a new study led by Penn State researchers suggests the social media platform TikTok may help them cultivate something new: empathy around the issue of climate change.
The researchers published their work in the Journal of Rural Studies.
The team, who analyzed responses to climate change TikToks posted by farmers, found that many people responded to the videos with warmth and compassion, signaling emotional empathy.
However, the researchers also found that the videos were not as successful at triggering cognitive empathy in viewers. In this case, the cognitive empathy manifested as comments in which viewers go beyond compassion and engage in thinking critically about the content by adding their own thoughts or asking further questions.
The study suggests that platforms such as TikTok offer new ways for farmers to communicate with consumers, according to Ilkay Unay-Gailhard, a researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies in Germany who led the study while completing her European Union Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellowship at Penn State.
“Today’s consumers are increasingly looking for transparency in agri-food systems and want to know who their farmer is and how their food is produced,” she said. “They’re also increasingly willing to ensure a sustainable agri-food sector by supporting farmers involved in decisions to mitigate and adapt to climate change. These trends indicate an opportunity for farmers to engage more directly with citizens, as policymakers, media, scientists and activists already have been doing.”
Mark Brennan, professor and UNESCO Chair in Community, Leadership, and Youth Development at Penn State, said the work has the potential to be helpful to farmers and that it’s important to remember that empathy — putting ourselves in the place of others to understand their actions and beliefs — is very different from sympathy.
“When farmers and consumers can better understand each other, we can better foster innovation, increase food security, and enhance the adoption and diffusion of new techniques and markets that benefit all,” Brennan said. “This empathy also shows that farmers and consumers are not that different and want the same things many times. Connecting with them builds understanding and breaks down the artificial divides that are often propagated in our society. We are better together in the end.
According to the researchers, the work was inspired by the dual way that food production both contributes to and is affected by climate change. For example, raising livestock and producing food products can create greenhouse gas emissions that help trap heat close to the surface of the Earth. Simultaneously, these effects of climate change also affect food systems in a variety of ways, including less water or poorer soil quality for livestock and crops.
Unay-Gailhard said this intersection gives farmers a unique perspective, and while conversations about food production and climate change typically happen at the social and political level, the rise of new social media platforms is giving farmers new ways to speak out.
Source: psu.edu
Photo Credit: Tiktok
Categories: Pennsylvania, General