The Right begins to spread air-conditioner panic online
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:
Yale Climate Connections was one of the top spenders on enviro/energy Facebook and Instagram ads last week, directly taking on climate misinformation in users’ feeds
Action for the Climate Emergency’s 501(c)4 arm is wading into Wisconsin’s closely watched State Supreme court election next week with an attempt to motivate younger voters on Instagram with climate action messaging
As if the gas stove wars weren’t enough, right-wing media and politicians are now pushing the myth that Joe Biden and Democrats want to take away everyone’s air conditioning units
Google announced digital ad library changes that could soon allow us to see more ads from climate groups and polluters alike
Digital Advertising Roundup
Facebook + Instagram 👍
For starters, here were the top 25 climate and energy-related advertisers on Facebook and Instagram last week:
Yale Climate Connections was one of the top spending advertisers on these issues last week, launching an interesting new campaign that directly combats fake news and climate misinformation:
Texas Climate Jobs is up with a variety of new ads about jobs, jobs, jobs. Touting the job-creation opportunities for a bunch of clean energy projects – from electrifying school buses and pursuing “carbon neutral schools” to offshore wind farms – the organization is mostly targeting Facebook users in Houston and San Antonio. Climate Jobs Illinois is running similar ads in Illinois, too.
The latest move in the gas stove wars: Climate Solutions is running ads educating Facebook users of all ages on the health hazards of gas appliances and advocating for solutions in Washington state.
Next Tuesday is Election Day in Wisconsin, where a closely-watched state Supreme Court race could determine the future of redistricting, abortion rights, climate action, and democracy itself in the state. Climate Emergency Advocates (the 501(c)4 affiliated with Action for the Climate Emergency) spent $6,800 last week supporting liberal justice Janet Protasiewicz with these fantastic TikTok-style explainer ads. They’re pretty much exclusively targeting Wisconsinites aged 18-34 on Instagram:
One anti-climate advertiser that we hadn’t seen ads from in a while is the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM). The group is opposing California’s plans to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles, in addition to running some generic greenwashing ads on plastic recycling.
Google & YouTube 🎞️
Big news on the Google ad front: for years, Google has only archived political ads that mention a candidate for state or federal office or a ballot initiative. Naturally, that means we haven’t had consistent insight into all climate or energy-related campaigns (think Exxon, BP, etc). But this week, Google announced they will soon be publicly archiving all ads – political or not – on their platforms in order to get ahead of new European Union regulations. Hopefully, that means we’ll have even more insights to share with you here.
The climate or energy-related political advertisers on Google that were archived last week included: Conservation MN Voter Center ($19,900), Coalition for American Jobs ($11,900), CA Energy & Infrastructure Labor Management Coop Trust ($4,500), and Virginia LCV ($2,200).
Snapchat 🤳
There were no major new climate or energy-related advertisers on Snapchat last week.
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 15 top-performing public posts (by # of interactions) related to climate and energy on Facebook last week:
Last week, over 12,900 public posts on Facebook mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 728,000 interactions. That’s a slight increase from the previous week.
A few of the top posts came from President Joe Biden’s accounts generally touting clean energy and climate investments:
Breitbart continued to attack electric vehicles, resorting to dog-whistle politics by calling Ford Motor Company “woke” and reporting that the manufacturer is “losing billions” on EV’s:
Right-wing video host Stu Burguiere asserted that climate advocates are lying about polar bears being threatened by climate change by pointing to an increase in bear populations (which seems to actually be the result of our increased ability to track more polar bears).
…and on FOX News’ page, the gas stove wars are heating up: the conservative outlet posted that Biden wants to wage war against Americans’ home air conditioners. Keep an eye on this narrative, folks –in the past week (and ahead of what may be a very hot summer), it has been pushed in the NY Post, The Hill, local outlets, and FOX. It was also shared by Sen. Marsha Blackburn and the Western Journal, but both posts received little engagement.
Meanwhile, here were the top-performing feed posts (excluding Reels and Stories) related to climate and energy on Instagram last week:
Last week, over 6,900 public posts on Instagram mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 8.5 million interactions. The conversation was relatively tame, however, with only generic posts about climate impacts and protecting the environment bubbling to the top.
This post about intersectionality from @feminist received the most interactions:
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.
P.S. Are you signed up for Climate Nexus’ daily newsletter, Hot News? It’s a one-stop shop for everything you need to know in the climate and environmental policy space. Subscribe here>>
The Fight Over ‘Cop City’ (NYT The Daily, 3/28)
Climate doomism is bad storytelling (The Conversation, 3/28)
Online misinformation is spreading from English to Spanish (Yale Climate Connections, 3/24)
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