Climate Monitor: June 24th
7 major anti-climate messaging tracks, and their online attacks against women
Welcome to Climate Monitor, your weekly digest of the digital tactics and strategies that polluters and climate-action groups are deploying online to shift public opinion and move legislation. We’ve examined political ad spending on platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Google by over a dozen groups and corporations from the past week, as well as their activities on social media.
Here’s what we found:
Best performing Facebook post from DCC members: The Years Project
Top ad spenders: Volvo, NRDC, Shell, API, NRDC Action Fund
Most of last week’s top spenders on Facebook and Instagram ads related to climate change are continuing their campaigns from previous weeks. Volvo and Shell are still running Facebook ads about their alleged commitments to clean energy investments, while NRDC and their Action Fund are continuing to run ads promoting the American Jobs Plan. The American Petroleum Institute did start a new Facebook ad campaign, this time railing against raising new taxes, claiming, among other things, that they would risk America’s “energy independence.”
Below are the top 25 spenders on climate and energy-related Facebook ads last week.
Climate groups focus on record heat and CO2 levels
With huge, intense heat waves coming across the country so early in the year - not to mention another historic drought in the west - a couple of climate groups used the hot weather as a hook for their successful posts last week. Climate Reality and 350.org in particular used record CO2 and temperature levels across the globe to remind followers about the crisis. However, despite the intense heat, there are still climate denying groups that are undermining what we’re all observing with our own eyes and sweat glands.
Here are the top 10 posts from climate and polluter groups on Facebook last week and the # of interactions each post received:
Here are the top 10 posts from climate and polluter groups on Facebook last week and the # of interactions each post received:
Not Breaking News: Fox News is a misinformation platform
Analysts at triplecheck looked at the reach and sources of misinformation from new conspiratorial claims from Fox News, Jason Miller, and Dan Scavino:
Over the past week (6/14 to 6/21) over 8 million people were exposed to climate misinformation on Twitter alone. Some of the themes we saw last week, such as questioning the connection between the impact of climate change and national security, are still going strong. General climate denial content also got a boost from a Fox News interview with climate denier Steve Koonin, who called climate change a “fiction of the media” during his June 21 appearance on Tucker Carlson Today.
Message Brief: 7 major anti-climate messages on Facebook
After tracking organic and paid content related to climate on Facebook, Instagram, and elsewhere on social media for the past few months, we’ve started to get a broader picture of messaging trends among right-wing media and anti-climate personalities. It should come as no surprise that almost none of these prominent arguments engage with climate action in good faith, and all use misinformation in one form or another.
These trends include:
Liberal hypocrisy;
“Everything is climate change”;
“Climate change is a bigger threat than _____ ?!?”;
Climate activists don’t actually care about jobs;
Liberals want you to give up your lifestyle;
Climate action will hurt America;
And, fossil fuels are necessary for climate action.
Climate skeptics’ biggest online target is often women
Climate skeptics have used ad hominem attacks - or going after the speaker in lieu of criticizing their argument - to argue against climate science for years. These days, climate skeptics online love to deploy these attacks against women climate activists, and they’re often rewarded with tons of engagement on social media for doing so, especially on Facebook. Overall, we found that so far this year, 40 of the top 100 posts by climate-denying pages about climate change, global warming, or the Green New Deal use women as the target of their attacks.
That’s it for Climate Monitor this week. As always, log in to climatemonitor.substack.com to see these updates in real time as we publish them throughout the week!
And if you have any comments or questions, feel free to drop us a line by shooting an email to ClimateMonitor@DCC.org.