SOCIAL MEDIA CRASH COURSE
MODULE 3.1
Humour
As mentioned in Module 3 (that you should have completed before reading this), humour can be very helpful to spread your message. Humour is like dogs: everybody loves them. In the following, we will talk a little bit more about this and provide you with some tools of how you could use humour in your communication.
A SMILE AS A GATE
Why and when humour makes sense
Humour is something cultural. Being from Germany and the U.S., we probably have a different understanding of humour than you from Estonia. However - from our experience, Estonians do have a very creative, sarcastic sense of humour that made us laugh many times! What do you think?
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Of course environmental issues can be very serious and should not be laughed away. But sometimes, this seriousness is the biggest problem, because it scares and disengages people. Serious issues and humour are not mutually exclusive: If you look at the Fridays For Future movement all over Europe and the world you see that many young people make an effort to not only have powerful posters they carry around with them, but also to make them witty and, yes, funny!
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GOOD AND BAD HUMOUR
Studies looking into humour in environmental communication have found a few things that are important to consider.
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Irony, sarcasm and satire work on many people, but some forms work better than others. This study on ironic and satirical humour in climate change communication finds that "highly ironic, one-sided satirical messages may serve as a useful tool for climate change engagement". This means that both people who were and were not concerned about climate change before they saw short satirical clips thought more about the messages and were less likely to discount them as "just funny" when the messages were one-sided (i.e. showing one perspective) and clearly ironic - for example, the satirical story of a researcher who explains all the crazy things he does to make climate change seem real. So: Make the irony in your messages very clear when you use it!
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Positive, good-natured humour that does not shame or expose people or things in a mean way is more effective than negative, condescending humour, as this study has found. One reason for this is that positive, "friendly" humour brings out our positive emotions and connotations and makes it easier to process negative emotions, such as fear or insecurity, that might come with the content. This is in line with what this study about humour in environmental communication has found: Good-natured (literally...) humour works well to share environment-related messages. So: make jokes, but while they can be controversial, they should never be mean.
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Appropriateness is, however, an important tricky thing. In some situations, some kinds of jokes might just not be appropriate. But if that is the case, that can also lead to people engaging and discussing about things. You know your own culture best to tell when a joke is ok or even helpful, and when it might not fit at all. So: don't hurt anyone's feelings, but don't be too shy about humour in more serious contexts!
A HUMOUROUS TOOL: MEMES
Possibilities to include humour in environmental education are endless. Apart from posting fun facts about your organisation, uploading funny pictures or videos, and sharing humorous content by others, there is one tool we would like to draw your attention to today: memes
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Have you ever muted a movie and then done your own voice over/lip synchronisation together with friends, so that the outcome is different and usually a parody of the movie? Memes do something similar with pictures.
Memes are, as wikipedia defines them, "pieces of media, traditionally combining image macros with a concept or catchphrase". It can be real pictures, photoshopped pictures, screenshots from movies or drawings and cartoons, often displaying emotions or reactions, that come in combination with captions. Together, the picture with the words on it usually are used to convey a funny message that often has sarcastic or ironic elements.
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Find some examples below - which one of those memes is funny to you? Which one would you maybe consider using in your organisation?
Making memes is extremely easy. One of the simplest tools offering you the most convenient editor and ready-to-go-templates is this meme generator by imgflip (which was also used for the memes below). Check it out and experiement! Maybe you can even use this for Task 2 of the learning activity?
