Climate Change Movements and Social Media

Students and youth from around the United States met with sustainability representatives of Facebook at an event organized at the U.S. pavilion at COP21.  The representatives of the social media conglomerate led discussion based around the communication strategies of climate change and the use of the Facebook platform for climate change action and organizing. 

I was reluctant to recognize the role of Facebook and suspicious of the already ubiquitous company, believing that true action on climate change comes through genuine interpersonal contact.  I must admit that based off of our conversation their concerns and intentions are in good faith, but yet I was disturbed by the reliance of students upon Facebook combined with the continued limited role of social media. 

Facebook and social media does offer a unique and effective platform for communication and organizing.  Likeminded individuals are becoming linked through electronic ties, sharing information and merging movements in ways never before possible.  But the Facebook role in this exchange is only as a tool utilized by individuals and organizations—Facebook does not constitute the movement itself.

This distinction is incredibly important as social movements take on an increasingly electronic nature, but one that has been lost by both Facebook as an organization and by concerned individuals.  Facebook has been venturing into the realm of politics, suggesting options to openly share affiliation with movements and prompting political responses and posts.  They faced backlash for their selective political and humanitarian concern most recently with the terror attacks in Paris, which received official recognition within the platform, while other instances of terror were neglected by the endorsed Facebook infrastructure.

Organizers and social activists have become dependent on the institution of Facebook, so much so that in the discussion at COP21, organizers requested that Facebook take the lead in efforts to mobilize public support.  The hoped that Facebook could develop universal and official programs that would force individuals to explicitly declare their allegiances in political matters like climate change.  Instead of activists using Facebook to promote social change, activists asked Facebook itself to promote the change. 

This is dangerous—not in a paranoid, big brother sort of way—but in a much more practical and productive sense.  If activists and organizers become increasingly reliant on Facebook to realize and implement social change, the authenticity of these movements is undercut and the effectiveness of the movement is limited to Facebook’s limited and selective reach.  Individuals will become lazy, believing that social change will be delivered to them by multinational corporations which require only require a ‘like’ and an account.

Facebook is limited by its very nature.  Facebook consolidates the network for those who are already interested and connected to the climate change movement, but works counterproductively when attempting to make the movement inclusive and popular. Users, while intensely connected into their own self-selected network, are insulated form those who hold opposing and contrary views.  While climate change activists can share their views on a highly visible platform, this information reaches only those who are already engaged and not those who deny the importance of climate change or are uninvolved.  Users choose and are structurally encouraged to ignore those who should be engaged most. 

Users must recognize that social media is a tool, a crucial and highly effective tool, of movement building and applicable to mobilizing support for climate change.  However, we must recognize social media’s limitations and boundaries in order to build authentic, motivated, and universal movements that address climate change in an equitable and just manner.