Non-Governmental Organisations’ Facebook Ecological Activism in Malawi:

This study aimed at assessing strengths, challenges, and opportunities of Malawian environmental non-governmental organisations’ (ENGO) use of Facebook for climate change awareness and motivating adoption of positive ecological behaviours. Climate change is the most serious environmental risk of the 21st century. In Malawi, both government and ENGOs use various approaches for raising climate change awareness. One of which is using Facebook to motivate both online and offline public ecological engagement. This study used content analysis to examine ENGOs’ Facebook posts, and key informant interviews with administrators of the Facebook Pages. Using Castell’s network society and global public sphere, results show that ENGO’s Facebook ecological activism, despite their asymmetrical nature due to financial and technical constraints, helped them to network and gain credibility, which opened opportunities for collaboration. Future studies may increase sample of Facebook Pages and investigate connections between digital ecological activism and offline environmental behaviours. However, this study argues that availability of technological affordances like what Facebook offers, is insufficient to motivate network society to deliberate and create ‘supra-individual’ climate change discourse. Instead, understanding use, design and approaches of social media communication is vital. Hence, this study contributes to scholarship of online ecological activism in resource-constrained Global South countries.