TikTok is failing to deliver on its climate misinformation pledge
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:
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This past Earth Day, TikTok made a pledge to remove climate misinformation on its platform. It’s been two and a half months since then… and a cursory search by Climate Monitor reveals that TikTok seems to have failed to make good on that promise.
The top-spending climate or energy-related advertisers on Facebook and Instagram last week were oil giant Shell and the American Chemistry Council.
U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his social media team want you to know that he is really, really pro-fossil fuel.
Conservatives are *very* mad about NYC’s new restrictions on coal-fired pizza ovens.
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 two highest spending advertisers on digital ads in the climate and energy space last week were oil giant Shell and plastics industry lobbying group the American Chemistry Council. Shell continued running ads touting investments in renewables, while American Chemistry heavily promoted the recyclability of plastics.
One new campaign we saw this week came from the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, which ran a slew of acquisition ads nationwide, featuring images of sea turtles and manatees with stats on how badly they have been affected by pollution. They also issued several calls to action to protect these sea dwellers, ranging from donating to the organization to urging the Biden administration to put an end to single-use plastics by 2050.
Another new campaign this week came from Michigan’s main energy provider, Consumers Energy. Consumers Energy provides power to Michiganders through several different methods, ranging from nuclear to hydroelectric to natural gas and coal. In the past, however, they have focused their advertising efforts on clean energy – and this campaign was no different, featuring a reminder to use AC cycling to conserve energy and protect the environment.
…and finally, The Wilderness Society ran a new campaign nationwide on Facebook and Instagram uplifting the voices of people who live in the Permian Basin, as well as thanking the Biden administration for protecting public lands. Check out the group’s ads here.
Google & YouTube 🎞️
There were only two new or noteworthy climate or energy advertisers archived by Google last week: Conservation MN Voter Center ($10,800), which is thanking state legislators for supporting clean energy and NRDC Action Votes ($7,800), which is targeting Pennsylvania with pro-clean air YouTube ads.
Snapchat 🤳
There were no new climate-related ads on Snapchat this week.
🔦 Spotlight: TikTok is failing to deliver on their anti-climate misinformation pledge
This past Earth Day, TikTok made a pledge to “ramp up enforcement” to remove and effectively ban “climate change misinformation that undermines well-established scientific consensus.” It’s been two and half months since this pledge allegedly went into effect, and let’s just say…not much seems to have actually changed.
A cursory search for videos featuring climate misinformation reveals quite a few in which creators – who are largely conservatives – question all aspects of climate change. From a simple search on TikTok, Climate Monitor easily identified a dozen videos on TikTok featuring climate misinformation or climate change denial, amassing hundreds of thousands of likes and views. Here are just a few:
This one from the conservative Young Americas Foundation features a prominent far-right activist “shutting down” an audience member who is arguing that climate change is real:
Another video, which boasts over 700,000 views and 49,000 likes, is only 20 seconds long… and asserts that liberal leaders, like Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, are causing climate disasters to happen so that they don’t seem incorrect about climate change.
And yet another video, which has over 246,000 views, follows in a similar vein: a satirical account, The Offended American, posted a video claiming that Al Gore came on their podcast, had too much whiskey, and told the hosts that he made everything up in his celebrated climate documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. This is, of course, false.
Other climate misinformation TikToks that received a notable amount of attention and likes include a video attacking Greta Thunberg and telling people to “increase their carbon footprint” and a 3-minute reading of a *very long* Twitter thread that claims that many scientists believe climate change isn’t real and are being silenced.
One thing is clear: as of right now, TikTok seems to be pretty clearly failing to uphold their Earth Day pledge – and climate misinformation is still alive and well on their platform.
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 12,600 public Facebook posts mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 616,300 interactions.
Anti-climate posters were very active on Facebook this week. U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy flooded Facebook with content from his visit to an oil drilling site in eastern Ohio last Thursday. He made use of one of the GOP’s favorite talking points – ”unshackling American energy” – and also made the bizarre claim that because American natural gas is “cleaner” than Russian natural gas, this move would actually be good for the environment.
Another high-engagement post this week came from evangelical leader Franklin Graham who posted a wide-ranging, plain-text rampage that was chock full of climate misinformation. Here is a snippet: “We read about climate change in the Bible where God shut the heavens and there was no rain—Egypt and the known world around them had seven years without rain, and people came from everywhere to buy grain from Joseph. There’s big money to be made in the climate change agenda.”
And finally, some good news: Leonardo DiCaprio announced that his climate organization, Re:wild, was partnering with the Brazilian government to the Amazon and the Indigenous communities who call it home.
Here were the top-performing feed posts (excluding Reels and Stories) related to climate and energy on Instagram last week:
Last week, over 6,100 public Instagram feed posts mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 5.5 million interactions.
The top two posts were from two popular pop culture accounts, @rap and @pubity, and addressed an EU initiative to study if deflecting the sun’s rays is a possible solution to climate change. As we’ve written time and time again, posts about innovative engineering solutions to the climate crisis consistently receive high levels of engagement. The third top-performing post was @leonardodicaprio’s Amazon rainforest announcement, which he cross-posted on Facebook and Instagram.
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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Conservatives have moved on from being mad about gas stoves… to being mad about pizza ovens (Salon, 6/29)
This year’s Fourth of July might have been one of the hottest days in 125,000 years (WaPo, 7/5)
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