The Climate Crisis as Clickbait?
A roundup of the climate conversation across social media this week
Welcome to Climate Monitor, a weekly, data-driven report on the digital strategies polluters and pro-Climate groups are using to shift public opinion and move legislation. Here’s what we found:
Toplines:
Popular Instagram news aggregator accounts – or “Like Farms” – have become a major source of climate information… and that has big implications for the way we talk about climate online
The National Parks Association is running Facebook and Instagram ads to celebrate the new Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni National Monument in Arizona
In the wake of the devastating fires in Lahaina, HI this week, the Democratic Party is calling out GOP 2024 hopefuls for their anti-climate rhetoric on social media
The US might have a clean energy economy even faster than we thought, according to the International Energy Agency
Digital Advertising Roundup
Facebook + Instagram 👍
For starters, here were the top 25 climate and energy-related advertisers on Facebook and Instagram last week:
The top spenders on digital ads in the climate and energy space continue to be oil giant Shell, the American Petroleum Institute, and the American Chemistry Council (AKA the plastics lobby).
A new and notable climate-related ad campaign this week comes from the National Parks Conservation Association. They are running ads nationwide on Facebook and Instagram to celebrate the Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument that President Biden designated at a big ceremony in the state last week.
Another notable new climate-related ad campaign came from Northwest RiverPartners, a non-profit, community-owned electric utilities company based in the Pacific Northwest. These ads are running on Facebook and Instagram in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, and they tout the benefits of carbon-free hydropower.
And finally, a group called Energy Boom, which is linked to the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC-Berkeley and GridLab, is also running new ads nationwide on Facebook and Instagram. These ads promote the 2035 and Beyond Report, which lays out a path to meet its offshore wind potential and create a clean energy future.
Google & YouTube 🎞️
In terms of new and noteworthy climate or energy advertisers archived by Google last week, the Resources Legacy Fund ($4,700) is continuing to run ads featuring “outdoor voters” calling on President Biden to establish more national monuments in the West.
Snapchat 🤳
On Snapchat, Patagonia continued to run ads about the regulation of the Anaconda power plant in Montana.
🔦 Spotlight: The Climate Crisis as Clickbait?
The climate has been a *hot* topic this summer as record-breaking heat impacted 81% of the entire world’s population and extreme weather hit every single continent in July 2023 alone. And Instagram, as one of the world’s largest social platforms, has turned into an undeniable hub for discourse about the way the climate crisis is impacting all of us this summer. Of the top 20 climate-related Instagram posts from the last 30 days, five of them (including the top three posts) are about the extreme heat – and they amassed a collective 2.2 million likes. Take a look:
And you might notice that all of these posts… look pretty similar. They all feature an image of the Earth burning in some way, shape, or form. And they have another crucial thing in common: all of these posts come from social media news aggregators – specifically, @rap, @pubity, and @daily_loud, instead of mainstream newspapers’ or environmental groups’ accounts.
These types of accounts typically post about many topics ranging from animal videos to fun facts about popular TV shows to Cardi B being bit by a spider – but they seem to have realized that posting about the climate crisis is a vehicle for getting a ton of likes and engagement. And they seem to have worked out a formula too: pair a terrifying headline with a “planet-on-fire” image and you get thousands of likes.
On one hand, this could be seen as a positive. The fact that these accounts – which have a collective 91 million followers – are posting about climate-related news means it’s almost definitely the case that more people are aware of this than they otherwise might have been. Moreover, several of the captions include quotes or information from legitimate entities like the UN and the World Meteorological Organization.
On the other hand, however, there is reason to be wary here. When it comes to the information shared in these posts – which is usually only about 3-5 sentences total – the research isn’t always cited, and we don’t really have much context about the data as a whole. Moreover, a lot of these posts are pretty scary, don’t offer a ton of solution language, and lend themselves to the feeling of climate doom (you can read our analysis on the issue of online climate doom here >>>).
In any case, we will be keeping an eye on these accounts and their interactions with the climate space. They are certainly “Like Farms” – but it is also undeniable that a whole lot of people are getting exposed to climate-related news from them. And that means they have an important role to play (and an obligation to provide good-quality information) when it comes to how people understand and view the climate crisis.
What’s Trending on Social Media
How are climate and energy issues being discussed by Americans on social media? Every week, we conduct a robust keyword search using CrowdTangle for general terms like “climate change,” “global warming,” “fossil fuels,” and over 40 more specific topics (like “electric vehicles,” “gas stoves” and “pipelines”). Here were the 10 top-performing public posts (by # of interactions) related to climate and energy on Facebook last week:
Last week, over 11,800 public Facebook posts mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 723,800 interactions.
One of the top-performing videos this week came from the Democratic Party. It features a split screen with one side displaying GOP 2024 candidates denying climate change and the other showing images of the extreme wildfires that swept Lahaina in Hawaii this week. It’s a pretty poignant (and pointed) video. Check it out here >>>
The wildfires in Hawaii were also a topic, however, of several top posts from climate deniers this week. Posts from Question Everything, a Doctor-Who themed conspiracy account, and libertarian pundit John Stossel garnered a lot of attention on Facebook this week and alleged that the wildfires – and climate change as a whole – was a hoax created by elites.
And finally, Sean Duffy, a former congressman and current Fox News contributor, received a lot of engagement on a video he posted of a segment he did attacking the new national landmark that President Biden designated in the West. Check it out >>>
Here were the top-performing feed posts (excluding Reels and Stories) related to climate and energy on Instagram last week:
Last week, over 6,200 public Instagram feed posts mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 6 million interactions.
The top three climate-related Instagram posts came from news aggregators @wealth and @factsdailyy about skydiver Luigi Cani who open a box of seeds mid-air over the Amazon rainforest and from @feminist about centering voices from the Global South when we talk about climate change.
Weekly Reading
Want to go deeper? Here’s a quick roundup of news from the past week at the intersection of climate, digital strategy, and advocacy.
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The US will have a clean energy economy even faster than we thought (NYT, 8/14)
This has been the hottest July in the 174 years since scientists started tracking heat (NOAA, 8/14)
The extreme weather is causing Spanish-language climate misinformation to spread at an alarming rate online (8/14)
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 lucy@fwiwmedia.com