## 3 Media-Based Communication Strategies
### WOM Case Study
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**No.**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Publication Date**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Story Title**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Unique Visitors on**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Facebook**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Facebook**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Facebook**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Video**} \\  & & & **National** & & & **Engagements** & & **Clikes** \\ \hline
1 & 24 December 2019 & This giant signray could be the world’s biggest freshwater fish & 153,762 & 3600 & 167 & 315 & No \\ \hline
2 & 31 July 2019 & Mekong River at its lowest in 100 years, threatening food supply & 50,274 & 1200 & 364 & 229 & No \\ \hline
3 & 17 August 2020 & Cambodia’s biggest lake is running dry, taking forests and fish with it & 31,103 & 3200 & 71 & 304 & No \\ \hline
4 & 31 January 2020 & Southeast Asia’s most critical river is entering unchartered waters & 31,010 & 3000 & 128 & 286 & No \\ \hline
5 & 23 April 2019 & In Cambodia, giant turtles come back from the brink & 30,491 & 8100 & 154 & 926 & Yes \\ \hline
6 & 8 August 2019 & Earth’s largest freshwater creatures at risk of extinction & 30,303 & 9700 & 421 & 4000 & No \\ \hline
7 & 23 August 2018 & Southeast Asia may be building too many dams too fast & 26,339 & 1200 & 42 & 105 & No \\ \hline
8 & 8 May 2019 & Two-thirds of the largest rivers to longer flow freely-hard if’s hamming us & 24,159 & 1900 & 110 & 520 & No \\ \hline
9 & 17 October 2018 & How the world’s largest snake hunt hurts Southeast Asia’s biggest lake lake & 21,966 & 1200 & 73 & 92 & Yes \\ \hline
10 & 5 April 2019 & Cambodia’s endangered river dolphins at highest population in 20 Years & 20,178 & 6600 & 149 & 743 & Yes \\ \hline
11 & 30 July 2020 & Many freshwater fish species have declined by 76 percent in less than & 13,324 & 4600 & 97 & 450 & No \\ \hline
12 & 25 April 2019 & River sanctauries help giant fish receiver in Southeast Asia & 9777 & 1200 & 9 & 109 & No \\ \hline
13 & 4 September 2018 & An epic quest aims to find giant catfish babies & 9272 & 895 & 19 & 61 & Yes \\ \hline
14 & 29 March 2017 & Enromous fish make one of the world’s largest migrations & n/a & 6100 & 31 & 242 & Yes \\ \hline
15 & 22 March 2017 & Can the Amazon of Southeast Asia be saved? & n/a & 5700 & 43 & 457 & Yes \\ \hline
16 & 2 July 2018 & Critically endangered giant fish on men at lucury restaurants (Story by & n/a & 2400 & 156 & 228 & No \\ \hline
17 & 5 April 2017 & Angdor War’s collapse from climate change has lessons for today & n/a & n/a & n/a & n/a & Yes \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Engagement metrics of recent National Geographic stories about Mekong River topics, ranked by number of website visitors. To assess the popularity of Mekong stories, we compared user engagement for the 17 Mekong stories with 40 similar text stories recently published by National Geographic (as of 15 October 2020). To remove the effect of outliers, we compared median numbers for both sets of stories. For the Mekong stories, median numbers included 3100 engagements, 114 comments, and 310 shares, while for the non-Mekong stories, median numbers included 2700 engagements, 321 comments, and 231 shares. This suggests that Mekong stories were just as engaging as other content on National Geographic, if not more so. Among the videos developed for Mekong stories, which National Geographic posts separately on social media, those eliciting the most views were all about charismatic wildlife, including giant softshell turtles released into the wild (160,000 views), increasing numbers of endangered Irrawaddy river dolphins (76,000 views), and the water snake harvest in Tonle Sap Lake (61,000 views). In general, both positive or negative messaging appeared to generate reader interest and engagement: \"positive\" stories about the world's largest freshwater fish and increasing river turtle and dolphin populations were among the most popular stories, but so were \"negative\" stories about population extinctions and river degradation.