Eco-Influence: How Social Media Leaders Shape Public Perceptions of Environmental Politics

As environmental concerns grow, social media has become a crucial tool for advocacy, with influencers playing a key role in shaping public awareness and engagement. These influencers simplify complex environmental issues using storytelling, visuals, and personal narratives, making sustainability discussions more accessible to the public. However, questions remain about their effectiveness, particularly in terms of informativeness, persuasiveness, and their overall influence on public attitudes. This study examines how social media influencers impact environmental politics, focusing on gender differences in perceived informativeness, attitudes, and opinion leadership. It also explores whether social media usage frequency affects perceptions of influencers' persuasiveness and ability to simplify environmental issues. Finally, it investigates how informativeness and political simplification shape public attitudes toward influencers. Using a quantitative online survey with 101 participants, the study employs statistical analyses to assess these relationships. Findings reveal no significant gender-based differences in attitudes toward influencers or their perceived informativeness. However, frequent social media users are more likely to perceive influencers as effective in simplifying environmental topics. Additionally, informativeness strongly predicts public attitudes, while persuasiveness has a moderate effect, and simplification has minimal influence. This research highlights the importance of credible and well-structured content in environmental advocacy. It suggests that influencers should prioritize delivering clear, relevant, and evidence-based information while refining their persuasive techniques. The study contributes to understanding digital environmental communication and provides insights for improving influencer-led activism.