Page 31 - Peoples_Journal_Sri_Lanka

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

Through the awareness these teenagers get from Facebook, hopefully, they
will be working towards environmental justice while respecting it.

8. Discussion

The results show that people use social media, Facebook in this particular
case, as a means of communicating about public issues among each other.
This level of communication surpasses the personal sphere of two
individuals discussing a common problem and enters the public sphere
through the use of groups and pages on Facebook. Individuals‘ responses to
information on Facebook take different forms. Posting some information,
sharing it, commenting on it, and reacting to such posts happen at an
individual level. However, when these individual responses for information
on a common problem increase, it will become a joint action with shared
agreement. In this manner, activities of individuals on Facebook, which were
studied in this research, cater to the We-intention on a social media platform.

The results of this study also revealed that individuals use Facebook as a
means of better communication of environmental issues and crises. The
original intention of connecting people and finding friends through social
media has reached a whole new level, where it is also used as a news board
for issues that affect the community. As mentioned in the results, Facebook
not only gives out information it also invites the like-minded individuals to
form groups to fight against the issues that affect the general public.

It could be observed that the participants of the study had their preferences,
which gave prominence to certain matters regarding the environment over
others. Problems regarding forest and wildlife took prominence in their
preference list, where disaster and law, and policy making were at the end of
it. By studying these preferences, it can be observed that the collective
behavior of these individuals indicates the degree of attention paid by the
public to these common issues. With a higher number of individuals
attending a certain issue, it signifies that the interest in the issue is gaining
public attention and creating a discourse.

According to the participants‘ opinion, Facebook provides a platform without
many restrictions to discuss and act toward environmental justice. This