An update on the online fight to Stop Line 3
Proponents’ digital ad spending lags while social media interest spiked
Nearly a month ago, we found that proponents of Enbridge’s Line 3 in Minnesota had spent nearly $100,000 on Facebook ads promoting the pipeline from March to early May. Since then, though, those same groups have only spent an additional $30,000, and one proponent, Consumer Energy Alliance, stopped their Line 3 Facebook campaign at the end of April. Meanwhile, only two opponents have run Facebook ads against the pipeline in the past 30 days: progressive activist group TakeAction Minnesota and activist group Honor the Earth.
Here’s how much those groups have spent in the past month:
While Enbridge is still the biggest investor in Facebook ads about Line 3, all of their spending has gone toward the same ads they’ve been running since March. New Facebook ads from proponents of the pipeline have almost all come from Minnesotans for Line 3 and Minnesota Ag-Energy Alliance, the latter of which has been pushing a familiar argument: the pipeline benefits “Minnesota workers, families, and small businesses,” and creates “thousands of new union jobs.”
Minnesotans for Line 3, on the other hand, have recently taken a much more cynical approach. On top of arguing that Line 3 is the “safest” way to transport oil and that it’s a net economic plus, they’ve also been running ads featuring ad hominem attacks against Line 3 protestors and opponents. These ads are overwhelmingly targeted at either young adult men or men over 65.
Among opponents of Line 3, TakeAction Minnesota is technically the largest spender on Facebook ads, but most of their ads on the platform are focused on advocating for housing equity in the Twin Cities area, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, and guaranteed paid sick leave. The extent of their anti-Line 3 ads only includes a handful of ads promoting a protest against the pipeline in Minneapolis this week.
Honor the Earth, on the other hand, has spent nearly $25,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads, all opposing Line 3 in some way. A good few of their recent ads feature the one and only Jane Fonda (more on her involvement in a bit), the violence against Indigenous tribes that comes with fossil fuel projects like Line 3, and direct calls to President Joe Biden to cancel it. Most of Honor the Earth’s ads target women under 35, and unlike other pages advertising about Line 3, most of their ads are being shown nationwide, instead of mostly targeting Minnesota and neighboring states.
The digital ad action isn’t just on Facebook, however: as we reported last week, MN 350 has started running anti-Line 3 ads on Snapchat. They’ve now spent nearly $2,700 on the below ads targeting zip codes in northern Minnesota outside of the Twin Cities area, earning 447,253 impressions.
On social media, Jane Fonda’s activism in Minnesota earlier this week drew increased attention to Line 3: two days before she joined protestors on June 7th, Crowdtangle estimates there were 4.5k interactions with posts on Facebook about Line 3, and on the day of the protest itself, there were 78.5k interactions. On Instagram, the effect was more pronounced, jumping from 6.3k interactions to 127k interactions. Her video of the June 7th protest got over 100k views on Instagram.
Here’s where the top posts about Line 3 came from on Facebook and Instagram since the beginning of May:
Aside from posts from the legendary actress and activist, several of the most-engaged posts on Facebook and Instagram came from Indigenous pages like Native News Online, Indigenous Rising Media, and Indigenous People’s Movement.
Several pipeline opponents naturally celebrated the death of Keystone XL on social media this week and used the momentous development to call for the termination of other pipelines, including Line 3. The most engaged of these posts came from the Sierra Club and Al Gore.
Interestingly, two of the most engaged posts about Line 3 on Instagram came from a pair of online artists who meme-ified their symbolically charged art to raise awareness about the issue.
There were only a couple of highly engaged posts from proponents of Line 3 in recent weeks, one of which was a post from Minnesotans for Line 3 deploying the kind of ad hominem attacks against protestors we mentioned earlier: “The trips these protesters took over thousands of miles were made possible by the same fossil fuels they are taking for granted.”
The only high-performing pro-pipeline post on Instagram came from the account snowflake.tears, lamenting gas lines and high gas prices during the Colonial Pipeline shutdown last month.