Grim IPCC report briefly biggest climate story online in the past month
Climate groups use Facebook ads to keep up momentum as report’s organic reach fades
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their annual report on the state and possible futures of climate change on Monday. UN Secretary General António Guterres called the report “a code red for humanity,” a quote that made for eyeball-grabbing headlines. According to data from NewsWhip, articles about climate change and related topics got 888.5k interactions across Facebook and Twitter on Monday, representing the biggest spike in interactions on climate change stories in the past month.
What’s more, media outlets also published 6,074 climate-focused stories on Monday, the most articles published about climate change in a single day in the past month. According to NewsWhip, eight of the top 10 most-engaged stories about climate change published on Monday were about the IPCC report:
BBC: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity' (117.7k interactions)
USA Today: 'Code red for humanity': UN report gives stark warning on climate change, says wild weather events will worsen (101.5k)
New York Times: A Hotter Future Is Certain, Climate Panel Warns. But How Hot Is Up to Us. (80k)
NPR: A Major Report Warns Climate Change Is Accelerating And Humans Must Cut Emissions Now (77.4k)
CNN: Earth is warming faster than previously thought, scientists say, and the window is closing to avoid catastrophic outcomes (51.7k)
The Guardian: Major climate changes inevitable and irreversible – IPCC’s starkest warning yet (51.6k)
AP: Senate Dems unveil $3.5T budget for social, climate efforts (46.5k)
Daily Wire: ‘Pathetic, Dishonest, Virtue-Signaling Hypocrites’: Megyn Kelly Rips Climate Alarmists (45.1k)
Washington Post: Humans have pushed the climate into ‘unprecedented’ territory, landmark U.N. report finds (24.4k)
That said, interactions on stories about climate change appear to have been declining since Monday: on Tuesday, climate stories got 528.2k interactions and on Wednesday they got 331k interactions, and it’s possible that interactions on these stories might have dropped even faster if not for the Senate advancing the infrastructure and budget packages earlier this week. FWIW, this decline in organic engagement appears to mirror the rapid decline in national TV news coverage:
While organic engagement on stories about the IPCC report may be quickly dwindling, climate groups are still trying to capitalize on it through Facebook ads. We’ve identified at least seven groups, including the Green New Deal Network, 350.org, the Environmental Defense Fund and EDF Action, Conservation Colorado, Honor the Earth, and NRDC, that started running ads about the report on Monday. We estimate that these groups have so far spent around $3k on Facebook ads using the IPCC report to call for action (and/or collect emails and donations).