Climate Monitor: August 19th
Wildfires, infrastructure, and oil production drove the conversation
Welcome back to Climate Monitor, where we break down the online conversation over climate change from the past week. What digital tactics and strategies have polluters and climate-action groups deployed online to shift public opinion and move legislation? Let’s take a look.
Last week’s top climate posts on Facebook + IG 👍
The climate conversation on social media last week was defined by three main narratives: (1) global wildfires are a direct result of the climate crisis, (2) the infrastructure bill(s) will help solve the climate crisis, and (3) Biden is refusing to increase domestic oil production. Facebook was (unsurprisingly) dominated by right-wing content, while pro-climate advocates won the week on Instagram.
While the single most engaging post on Facebook mentioning climate or energy issues was from Joe Biden touting CA Gov. Gavin Newsom, the vast majority of the top posts were right-wing pages like Fox News, Kevin McCarthy, and Ben Shapiro.
🚨 Climate advocates should take note of this story, if you haven’t already.
As you can see from the posts below, this oil production story from FOX News dominated Facebook engagement last week.
Meanwhile, on Instagram, posts tended to lean more towards climate advocates’ favor. Last week, the top-performing post related to climate and energy topics was a photo post from @beautifuldestinations tying Turkish wildfires to the climate crisis. To date, it’s received over 1 million interactions.
Other top-performing posts similarly highlighted the wildfire situation. The below posts from Bernie Sanders, CNN, and Greenpeace all reinforced the same narrative and received hundreds of thousands of interactions.
Driving the conversation on Twitter 🐦
Here are the top 5 tweets about climate and energy last week - which all came from climate advocates. The tweet with the most interactions was a clever comment about mask use and C02 levels:
Others came from journalists Emily Atkin and Lucy Diavolo, in addition to Robert Reich and Bernie Sanders:
Digital advertising data 📈
From not-so-subtle congressional lobbying on infrastructure to activism and big oil gaslighting, there was lots of climate action in the digital ad space last week. While we saw some limited/ongoing campaigns in support of the American Jobs Plan / Build Back Better Agenda, most new paid media spending (at least from environmental groups) has waned, perhaps temporarily. Here’s what we are seeing:
Advertising on Facebook:
These are the biggest climate and energy-related ad spenders on Facebook + Instagram last week:
The Amazon-backed Climate Pledge was the top political spender nationwide on Facebook last week. The group has spent over $1.6 million in the past 90 days on the same ads they’ve been running for months urging corporate action on climate change. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil spent nearly $100,000 last week on national ads railing against unnecessary regulation and linking to their “policy position” on climate change.
The Green New Deal Network spent heavily on Facebook over the past week, urging lawmakers to #SealTheDeal on infrastructure legislation that addresses climate change in a big way. Many of their ads promote a Day of Action (today!), while others lobby specific lawmakers (we’re lookin’ at you, Josh Gottheimer), mention the global wildfires, and tout the most recent IPCC report.
Other climate-related Facebook ads that continued to run last week (earning at least 1M impressions) include the below ads from Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, Climate Power, and Citizens Climate Lobby.
On Google/YouTube:
Meanwhile, on Google and YouTube, we spotted a new ad campaign from the Better Jobs Together Campaign - which spent $22,000 last week lobbying conservative Democrats to support energy and job creation, including “cleaner-burning natural gas.” We’re unsure who is behind this campaign - reply to this email if you know the answer! You can view the group’s bilingual ads here.
On Snapchat:
Last Thursday, the Sierra Club launched a new wave of ads against local power companies across the country. They’ve spent over $15,000 telling Snapchat users to take action against Rocky Mountain Power, Georgia Power, Duke Energy, and others.
Here’s a picture of total climate/energy/environment spending on Snapchat ads this year:
Thanks for reading Climate Monitor! We want this project to be a key research tool to support your work and the work of your colleagues. Is there a specific organization or campaign that you’d like us to look into? Are you interested in other types of data? Send us an email (nick@fwiwmedia.com / kyle@fwiwmedia.com) or message us in the DCC Climate Monitor Slack channel.