 Okay, well, thank you all for being here. This is a wonderful opportunity to share our work with you I'm presenting on behalf of my co-authors on the influence of social media activism and opinion leaders on international environmental law and Both my co-authors have a very strong academic and legal background and I'm coming at this from a slightly different lens So my focus is on the civil society side of things and the campaigning attempts to influence Legal proceedings, so when it comes to the Q&A, please go easy on me for the legal side of it So I'll just go into a little bit more detail about my background and why I'm speaking to you and then go on to the work so There we go So when it comes to the assessment of the role of online activism I was thought or partially at least in each camp in the academic and practitioner divide So in academic terms my study of this came about while completing my MSc in environmental policy And that was with a focus on the efficacy of online petitioning and other forms of digital activism on the formation of environmental law And since then my professional experience has been working at a national international level with organizations like Greenpeace Oxfam and the Syria campaign who work with the Syria civil defense with the White Helmets and Now I'm the campaign's lead at the developer society and we do and Software development and campaign consulting and support with loads of huge organizations like amnesty and McMillan and save the children groups like that and Then for that context and my bonofides. This is me Locked to the Russian Embassy in London rather sort of embarrassingly pretending to a police officer just out of shot That the keys aren't in my underwear at the time So that's why I'm here and I'm moving swiftly on to speak about the actual work So when examining the role of social media activism and opinion leaders In our research we've broken it down into four key technological drivers And these are four significant components and global game changers in the way networking and public policy are done today And key parts of the information revolution But rather than give you and sort of a rush praises of them all I'd like to come to a bit more detail on one area and speak to some of my experience with this and that's social media activism So when it comes to exerting influence in international lawmaking procedure NGOs would be particularly active in their use of social media And now of course digital and social media run through all aspects of the work of contemporary NGOs Sort of the same as the society. You don't have an online and offline life. It's a blended thing now and But still digital work does remain siloed and you'll see that in job descriptions or in department titles There's still like digital functions. And and that's why we're looking at this here and and In order to understand this from the NGO side and perspective I can bring to this And I just want to briefly look at where social media sits within campaigning as conceptualized within NGOs So again, of course, we shouldn't be approaching this in a black box manner and then They're NGOs of all shapes and stripes, but using broad strokes for today's purpose We're looking at I NGOs so the big logos and campaigning world friends of the earth the amnesties 350s groups like this The model varies of course across these different organizations And but it usually roughly conforms to something like this and that's campaigning work as a broad bucket and This is attempt to shape policy at a government or corporate level This breaks down into advocacy and public campaigning so advocacy is the lobbying the behind-the-scenes efforts The research driven side of things and public campaigning is and the work to bring together Pressure from large numbers of people and focus it on specific targets So we're looking at the work that's done within public campaigning and that breaks down further into Digital actions, so you'll be aware of digital actions if you've ever taken an online petition done anything with change org or any groups like this and Further further breakdown of digital actions is the social media actions, and this is a subset. I'm gonna look at so through here and When looking at social media and This is often one of the first things that's reached for in the NGO tactics toolbox There's become the focus of a lot of public and internal attention and within NGOs So there's several key reasons for this and one is the clear metrics that are available at a public and internal level the fact that You measure what matters But what what you measure matters as well? And this is really important for NGOs in terms of their internal monitoring evaluation But also in terms of public perception and you can see numbers of people signed up You can see numbers of shares likes and things like this and this is and this has really I feel a disproportionate influence on Where focus is bought in terms of the work? it's a source of advertising and there's been a lot of grooming of NGOs and big organizations by and Google Facebook and the big drivers of online advertisement and there's been a huge engagement So it has become an area where a lot of budget is put and obviously you follow the money where the budget goes this is where focus goes and Finally, there's the dangerous fact that everyone thinks they know social media So it's really a common case. You'll have a senior manager telling you how to sort of direct your social media strategy and But in truth, it's still a relatively unknown to everyone even the experts in this area And we're only sort of starting to get a sense now of how social media actions will have an influence on Legal proceedings or a corporate policy or anything like that Apologies so in looking at this and the key elements that would be teased out in our research and about how social media influences legislation this is and About how big NGOs operate social media campaigns in this space and how they are a central node for these campaign actions Directing public influence in certain ways Looking at the affordances of the technology available So that means in terms of what new technology can do that couldn't be done previously If you're looking at a letter writing campaign and asking supporters to write their MPs This is a digitization of a previous tactic But if you're looking at some of the social media campaigns that could be done now this is something that couldn't be done in a previous era by civil society and We're looking at funding models and this is I think a really fascinating area and One where NGOs with a need for public donations have really been ahead of the curve in many regards so as with all things online or all things technological if There is no product that you're buying you and your data are the product And that's very much true in the NGO and civil society world and where data collection is a huge aspect of public campaigning for follow-up for any number of reasons whether it's this building and profile building or For their contact from fundraising and I'm sure that's the experience everyone here has had at some point and Okay, and to go into it and our framework and a little bit more detail and Of course sort of fools rush in where those you cite fear-to-thread and as Erling came board of stated here empirically documenting the causal influence of protest on policy is notoriously hard But we've already had some very interesting findings by approaching the interplay between digital campaigns and international lawmaking and from three major theoretical perspectives so with With a night at the time and making sure we're moving through this kind of quickly I'll just give a very quick skim over this first We look at the issue from an economics and that's a cost-benefit analysis perspective and in this way We've gone into topics such as slack to wisdom and the ease of participation for publics Secondly, we've approached the dynamics from a psychological perspective and particularly looking at social cognitive theory and the role of mass communications in behavioral change And thirdly then we turn our attention back to the system of international dispute resolution And this is where I massively rely on my co-authors for their support So to Finally move on and to quickly touch an example that I have first-hand knowledge of and what you're seeing here is still from the Everything is not awesome video produced by Greenpeace International as part of their safety Arctic campaign This is something that I worked on back in 2014, but I can't claim any credit Very minor role in us and but I was a part of it and something I can sort of speak to you from the inside and bring that practitioner and Practitioner insights what we're doing. So the Greenpeace global campaign to save the Arctic started in 2012 And this campaign has been umbrella for a group of actions aimed at protecting the Arctic from overfishing and deep sea mineral and extraction The aim of the campaign is to be established a global sanctuary in the Arctic But in many ways, this is a sort of almost fatigued legal position and More a hook for activism but something that can be understand by the public rather than as like a realistic Legal goal from the end of us and in terms of digital engagement. This has been hugely and hugely popular and hugely successful and by 2016 already a million eight million different people globally had taken online action of some Form of Greenpeace specifically in support of the Save the Arctic campaign And and then when we look at things like the data capture element of that We see how significant that is for the organization globally Since 2013 and world up Shell has been one of the primary targets of online action by Greenpeace And this is both for two clear reasons Shell have been very active in mineral extraction and exploration in the Arctic But are also a really convenient and villain again as a hook and an obvious and organization to engage the public on as most people had some form of conception of Shell and a lot of people have and negative perception of them in general terms from previous campaigns about their drilling and the Niger Delta and a Lot of their work over the years. So and the one I want to speak about now is the particular campaign that was focused on the Lego and Connection with Shell and the brand attack that was done on this which resulted in the Danish toy maker dropping their long-standing marketing association with Shell and for Our legal research I think this is really interesting because the campaign itself was not directly about Stopping Shell's work in the Arctic. It wasn't about putting climbers on rigs or any barriers to that work and the supposedly the from different research the Lost PR value to Shell was going to amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years But again to an organization the size of Shell. That's really not a huge dent in what they're doing It's not going to stop any of their operations and but in the same way that the save the Arctic campaign is not broadly about establishing Arctic sanctuary and That's been the same with the Lego and Shell campaign and because this was Primarily focused on generating discussion and debate about harmful environmental impacts of Shell's work But also with the aim of reducing their social license So the term for the public acceptance and perception of the practice of the oil industry and a lot of ways with them So some of the more out there work that Greenpeace do there will be a lot of internal discussions about things like the over some window and shifting the public discourse Around what is acceptable in terms of mineral extraction which then has an interesting impact on legal proceedings when it comes to it down the line so and in a way and With this example there's been a huge global public engagement with the legal narrative again Like we've said of those millions of people engaged globally They're all being targeted in emails social media through re-advertising and different means and being fed a legal message no matter how naive or simplistic it is about the role of Shell's work in the Arctic so Finally and very briefly to move on to the last element that we've looked into And that is influencers because of course what the social media be without influencers So in addition to the bonds that form between celebrities and their audiences celebrities influences on legislators and the public may be interpreted by the Tendency of humans to take social cues from high status individuals And this speaks to social proof which is one of the key concepts in online influencing And something that we're all familiar with on a day-to-day basis The sort of little rush you get when you get a like or a notification on social media And how we instinctively compare the numbers of shares and likes across organizations But across our own profiles and our friends that's a social proof Of where people are going and what people are doing has a massive influencing effect on absolutely everyone and So this paper has then that we're working on therefore identifies five renowned public figures in the area of global warming and climate policy brilliant and and Yet, unfortunately the subject of the slide is one of those subjects and that's been joyous for us And and we've been reflecting on the legal aspects of their active social media engagements and and these activities real world in play in impacts on climate negotiations international environment And then environmental law and related trade and investment policies and So of course with the time I've had to speak to you today And being on such great panel we haven't had time to be able to delve too deeply into all of it here But I think and hopefully you'll agree that the role of social media in influencing the form and formation of environmental law In some of the sort of indirect ways that I've touched on as well is really You know fascinating topics for us to work on and it's an emerging practice Both in terms of what practitioners are doing but also in the literature And we're hopefully adding something to that from both the legal and civil society perspectives And so thank you very much for all your time And we'd love to get follow-up from all of you or any of you who are interested on the academic or on the practitioner side of this Thanks very much