Right-wing media quickly moves on from gas stoves
A roundup of the climate conversation across social media this week
Welcome to Climate Monitor, a weekly report on the digital strategies polluters and pro-Climate groups are using to shift public opinion and move legislation. We’ve examined political ad spending on social media platforms, as well as what’s trending on social media. Here’s what we found:
Toplines:
While the American Chemistry Council has been the top climate & energy advertiser online for 11 weeks in a row, their generic ads don’t seem to be an effective use of ad dollars
Patagonia is running new ads on Snapchat, targeting users in CA, MT, and ME
Facebook and Instagram posts about gas stoves seemed to disappear into thin air last week, as the right-wing outrage machine moved on to other issues
Activist Greta Thunberg was temporarily detained at a protest in Germany last week, and news of the action dominated social media last week
Several TikToks from climate skeptics received millions of views on the platform
Digital Advertising Roundup
Facebook + Instagram advertising
For starters, here were the top 25 climate and energy-related advertisers on Facebook and Instagram last week:
For the 11th week in a row, the American Chemistry Council was the top climate & energy-related advertiser on Facebook and Instagram. The major lobbying group continues to run advertising seeking to put a friendly face on the plastics industry:
The amount spent on this campaign is enormous, but we’re skeptical that major spending on these ads is doing much of anything in terms of persuasion or building support for the American Chemistry Council - it seems like just corporate/agency PR-speak intended to show ACC members they’re doing something.
Van Jones’ Dream.Org was another major spender on climate-related Facebook ads last week. The group, which was initially focused on criminal justice reform, is running a new campaign urging climate aid for more impacted frontline communities. Here’s a link to their petition>>
In Minnesota, the Conservation Minnesota Voter Center continues to run a large-scale campaign urging the state legislature to take action on clean energy. The group has spent over $60,000 in the past month on these ads.
On the Right, conservative video outfit PragerU and right-wing youth organization Young America’s Foundation both ran anti-climate advertising last week - trying to “debunk” mainstream science and spread misinformation about the impacts of climate change. See PragerU’s ads here>>
Google & YouTube Advertising
There were no new Google ad campaigns related to climate and energy issues last week that were archived according to the company’s political ad policies.
Snapchat Advertising
There has only been one climate-related advertiser on Snapchat this year: outdoor clothing company Patagonia. The group’s $1,270 in ad spending targets California, Maine, and Montana with several small pro-climate campaigns:
What’s Trending on Social Media
How are climate and energy issues being discussed by Americans on social media? Here were the top-performing public posts (by # of interactions) related to climate and energy on Facebook last week:
Believe it or not, the previous week’s right-wing gas stove outrage completely fizzled out on social media, with pundits and personalities quickly changing the topic to other things.
The top performing climate & energy-related Facebook posts - both positive - came from Give a Shift About Nature and Barack Obama.
However, there were over a dozen anti-climate posts that received moderate to high levels of engagement last week, mostly coming from predictable right-wing sources like Dan Bongino, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Western Journal, and PragerU. Several anti-climate narratives that those pages tried to spread included the idea that climate action is anti-freedom, electric vehicles don’t work, and that liberals are exaggerating climate threats.
Meanwhile, on Instagram, here were the top-performing feed posts (excluding Reels & stories) related to climate and energy last week:
On Instagram, the climate conversation was driven entirely by activist Greta Thunberg’s detention at a demonstration in Germany. 13 of the top 25 most engaged posts about climate and energy issues were about Thunberg’s action. Some of the conversation devolved into misinformation about whether or not photos of her and police were staged (Fact check: they were not.)
The most engaged public feed posts on Instagram, however, came from NASA and NASA Earth, which shared a striking image of melting polar ice.
…and finally, we wanted to flag two anti-climate TikToks making the rounds last week. TikTok is not typically seen as a major vector for sharing right-wing or anti-climate content, but climate skeptics do engage heavily there.
This TikTok mocking Greta Thunberg’s knowledge of science has received over 4 million views in the past few days…and this profanity-ridden anti-climate TikTok is racking up hundreds of thousands of views, arguing that since a warming planet ended the ice age, climate change must be just a normal part of earth’s cycle, right?
Weekly Reading
Meta to reinstate Donald Trump’s Facebook account (POLITICO, 1/25)
Wyoming GOP lawmaker pushes electric-car ban, then says he didn’t mean it (Washington Post, 1/17)
Climate change misinformation has risen 300% on Twitter (AP, 1/19)
That’s it for this week! If you enjoyed reading this week’s issue, feel free to forward it to a friend or colleague.
Climate Monitor is a product of the Digital Climate Coalition + FWIW Media.
Tips/comments/questions? Email kyle@fwiwmedia.com