Addressing greenhouse gas information on social media
Luca Ciordia
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Twitch… social networks as a means of communication are already a reality, and information on climate change has benefitted from these new forms of dissemination.
Social media have already become full-fledged, communication platforms that are widely used both by individuals and institutions. Media outlets are not an exception. Many newspapers, both national and international, use social media to re-disseminate the news they publish daily, receiving a great deal of interaction from their public. Instant updates and interaction with users are two of the great advantages of this type of platform.
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Twitch… In some of them, audiovisual elements prevail, while others are more about text. This variety of formats makes the platforms very effective when it comes to publishing information.
Millions of news items are uploaded to the cloud every second and users can find all kinds of information. Climate change stories have become more popular in the last decades, as the consequences of human actions on our planet have become more obvious to the public eye.
Instagram was born in 2010. Since its creation, it has not stopped evolving and reaching more and more users. Currently there are more than 1 billion active users who use this platform daily. It allows users to post images, or videos, accompanied by a caption. Some years ago, Instagram added a feature to share stories that remain published for 24 hours on a user’s profile. Its great reception among Internet users and its audiovisual functions have managed to garner attention from the media. Instagram seems to provide an opportunity to reach audiences with images, infographics or illustrations.
Many organizations use Instagram to report on climate change. Greenpeace is probably the one with the most followers (3.9 million). On their profile, users can find all kinds of information about climate change. There are many videos and images accompanied by data and information to raise awareness about the problems related to greenhouse gas emissions.
In Spain, many media outlets use their accounts to inform about the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. One example is the profile of the Spanish National Radio and Television corporation, RTVE.
RTVE uses Instagram to share news pieces that have been broadcast, usually accompanied by a brief informative text summarizing the information.
On Twitter, users can post short texts about whatever they want. Recently, the platform incorporated a feature to share stories, just like Instagram, although its use is less frequent. Unlike Instagram, this platform allows media outlets to publish short news stories and even just the headlines and insert a link to the information source. It is one of the most used platform, having millions of users and allowing the publication of all kinds of information.
Many emblematic environmental activists use Twitter to inform about the problems that are affecting our planet. Greta Thunberg, the 18-year-old Swedish activist, has more than 5 million followers on her Twitter profile. There, she shares all kinds of information related to greenhouse gases and everything involved related to the problems we are causing as a result of our actions.
On Twitter, many media outlets just have a general profile to report on all kinds of news. But some news outlets have special divisions that focus entirely on environmental issues. A clear example is EFEverde, the environmental information department of Agencia EFE, which is the world’s fourth largest wire service. EFEverde has its own Twitter profile, where the agency shares environmental information daily and has more than 125,000 followers.
Other Spanish outlets specialized on environmental information are Ballena Blanca (with over 12,000 followers on Twitter), Climática (over 19,000) or El Ágora Diario (over 31,000).
In short, social media has been a new way of informing users. The constant ability to update information, as well the possibility to add multimedia elements make it easier for the media to interact with readers and raise awareness on the issues surrounding climate change and environmental destruction.