Thread by @CharlieZajicek

Delighted to say that I’ve (finally) got my Masters from @BristolUni @cabotinstitute

I’ve spent the last couple of years trying to better understand UK media narratives and social norms around #FlightFree travel. Here’s a bit about why, and what I found 🧵

Why?
👉🏽 Lots of research on why ppl who fly don’t want to reduce flying, but very little on people who #FlyLess
👉🏽 Air travel responsible for around 12% UK household emissions
👉🏽 As @_wearepossible showed, it’s an equity issue. 15% of the population in the UK takes 70% of flights

Air travel isn’t just a choice – it’s deeper than that.

Cheap flights, media narratives and social norms (eg stag dos) have made air travel normal.

It's become entwined into our relationships and how we plan our daily lives.

Read this banger for more: uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-…

There’s a growing movement of people @flyingless like @gretathunberg @kevinclimate @mmbuchs and going against the norm.

I wanted to understand the meanings of flight free travel in the UK, to see how narratives and representations compared to air travel – and imps for policy

On media reps, I started by looking at how the Telegraph, Mirror, Express, Guardian and Indy covered flight free travel over last 20 years.

Spike in 2010 came from the Iceland volcano, which grounded planes and meant that ppl who wanted to take a holiday had to find alt. means

The other big spike came in 2019, which corresponded to the famous David Attenborough documentary on #ClimateChange The Facts, the @XRebellionUK actions and lots of Thunberg campaigning.

On media themes, it wasn’t just about #climate or #environment – lots of articles featured themes of #romance and #convenience e.g. a romantic cruise to ‘The Holy Land’.

And there were loads more articles from high brow/broadsheets than tabloids.

The 3 media reps of #flightfree travel:
👉🏽Ethical = a responsibility to fly less based on environmental impact
👉🏽Cultural = reasons for going flight free related to adventure, freedom, romance, history etc.
👉🏽Practical = how to do it (ie using @seatsixtyone)

Freq. over time 👇🏽

I compared these with narrative accounts of the people who travel flight free, using the ‘Be inspired’ section of @FlightFreeUK.

These split into four narratives...

1. Not flying as the ethical choice
2. Going flight free means becoming a leader;
3. A means of freedom (e.g. productive gift time, grounding experiences, autonomy)
4. More convenient (e.g. time, speed and cost, + abstract stuff related to space, infrastructure and wellbeing)

The media reps and narratives show that flight free travel shares loads of the same meanings as ‘normal’ air travel, like #freedom, #autonomy and #convenience.

But leadership, moral responsibility and ethics are also central to flight free travel.

So what; why does it matter?

It means that they’re competing for lots of the same space and resources, as @SaraUllstrom and co found in Sweden.

This is a good thing. The more people think about flight free travel as normal, the more we fly less and the better for our planet.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

The way people do flight free travel gives us a few policy clues:

1. Facilitate skills to do flight free travel (eg media campaigns/targeted advertising)
2. Improve infrastructure for flight free travel (eg decent bike spaces on trains, @MidnightRails)
midnight-trains.com

3. Think about annual leave allowances – employers can give staff extra leave if they holiday flight free (see @_wearepossible Climate Perks), or staff can work from the train and that doesn’t count as leave. It’s about making flight free travel fit into other social practices.

4. Think about how travel fits into ‘mobilities of care’ – the norms that structure our lives around caring for kids or other dependents.

Ppl in my study often said how much easier it is to travel with kids by train than by plane.

5. Perhaps the most important thing is to leverage moments of disruption (e.g. COVID, Iceland Volcano) for these policy interventions – as that's when new habits gets formed.

Here’s a great thread from @ianwalker explaining why

Huge thanks to the work of @steviedubyu, @SaffronJONeill, @StefanGossling, @NicolaSpurling, @mmbuchs, @StayGroundedNet, @FlightFreeUK, @crisortunity, @giulio_mattioli, @SaraUllstrom @AJCorner + more for the inspiration

You can read the thesis here: research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/studentThes…

👋🏽