Page 19 - Peoples_Journal_Sri_Lanka

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ISSN 3121-3049
People's Journal Sri Lanka Volume 01, Issue 01

Lal Dey, 2014). However, there is not enough literature asking and
researching about the role of social media in environmental conservation,
protection, and justice (Hynes & Wilson, 2016; Hamid et al., 2017; Hasdemir
& Çetin,2019). Especially, there are fewer studies about third-world case
studies and their perspective (Scherman et al., 2015; Ghermandi & Sinclair,
2019). In this context, this research has formulated two research problems:
why social media has become a savior of environmental issues, and how it
happens.

3. Research Objectives

This research attempts to examine the potential of social media, Facebook in
particular, in gathering individuals to create a discourse on prevailing
environmental issues and achieve environmental justice. This study was
focused on the environmental issue-based activism on social media and the
effects of social media on achieving environmental justice. It also explored
the nature of the activists of these movements and attempted to study how
they worked to achieve their goals.

4. Theoretical Approach
In this paper, we will introduce the concept of We-Intention and explain the
concept in terms of social representation theory as the theoretical foundation
of the research.

4.1 We-Intention Theory

We-Intention is defined as a ‗‗commitment of an individual to engage in joint
action and involves an implicit or explicit agreement between the
participants to engage in that joint action‖ (Tuomela, 1995, p.9). The concept
was initialized by a number of philosophers (e.g., Bratman, 1987; 1999;
Tuomela, 1995; 2002a; 2002b), and was expressed in terms of ‗‗We together
will perform X (X represents a joint action)‖. While I-intention is explained
by individual-level reasons for performing a personal act, We-Intention is
explained when a person views the self as part of a social representation in
performing a group act (Bagozzi & Lee, 2002). We-Intention exists when a
person believes not only that he can perform his part of their joint action, but
also that he, together with his fellow participants, can perform the action