Lions, Whales, and the Web: Transforming Moment Inertia into Conservation Action

The media frenzy that descended on the small town of Burgeo as the whale struggled to survive, and the subsequent publication of Mowat's book, are among the first examples of efforts to turn spontaneous outpourings of outrage, curiosity, or empathy into conservation action by actively focusing media attention, a phenomenon that we have dubbed moment inertia. Organizations that effectively leveraged the moment inertia surrounding Cecil the Lion took advantage of the moral signaling inherent in the public outrage model to solicit donations, grow mailing lists, and pressure philanthropists. Upwell formed a small campaign around the event, with the following goals: draw attention to the town, which was struggling with receiving government assistance to dispose of the corpse; call attention to protections for stranded marine mammals; provide a humorous resource to inform the public about marine mammal strandings; and significantly increase the online conversation about whale strandings using Upwell's Big Listening attention model (see Weidinger et al., 2013). Upwell initiated a social media marketing plan, mobilized a highly-engaged mailing list, and launched HasTheWhaleExplodedYet.com (now expired), which provided visitors with continuous updates about the stranding event and resources on the appropriate treatment of stranded marine mammals, as well as contact information for local and regional stranding networks.