The average person spends 145 minutes per day on TikTok, the fastest growing social media platform. That equates to 2.63 grams of carbon dioxide emissions, or almost enough energy to power a standard car for an hour. When you multiply that by billions of people around the world, it adds up to a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report barder.
However, it is important to keep in mind that the social media platforms we use have therightmessages become hubs for climate information and are helping to engage people in a variety of ways. Moreover, these platforms also help citizens to connect with environmental activists and organizations and take action against climate change jigaboo.
There are several reasons why it is important to monitor polarization on social media. A highly polarized environment can create antagonism between groups, generate political deadlock and threaten pluralist democracies tvboxbee.
This research examines how polarization is affecting the promotion of climate-contrarian views on Twitter, specifically in the weeks surrounding the 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We analysed content from Twitter’s ‘top tweets’ for the year of COP25 and selected randomly five weeks throughout this time period distresses.
During this time, we observed an increase in the number of ‘top tweets’ by climate-contrarian influencers, as well as an increase in the number of ‘top Tweets’ by accounts stylesrant that are more polarized on climate issues than those with a clear climate focus. It is unclear why this trend occurred, but it may be a result of users with existing minority views more often promoting their views on social media and/or a general increase in the number of climate-contrarian influencers precipitous.
In addition to promoting these controversial views, we found that ‘top Tweets’ by these accounts were also accompanied by a large number of retweets and likes. This suggests that these accounts can have a positive impact on user engagement, although more research is needed to investigate the relationship between interaction rates and polarization levels in this context voxbliss.
The Study Shows That Oil and Gas Companies Still Have a Huge Role in Spreading Misinformation about Climate Change thetalka
The study found that fossil fuel companies, including some of the largest oil firms, continue to greenwash their products and spread misleading messages about climate change on social media. It also found that many of the biggest individual spreaders of disinformation online, such as those with a large Instagram following, get paid by fossil fuel companies to share these messages mypba.
For example, natural gas trade groups have hired young Instagram influencers to post pictures of recipes that call for using natural gas in place of electricity — a practice that’s known to keep countries reliant on fossil fuels and unable to switch to cleaner sources of energy. The resulting messaging can be extremely damaging to climate action, the report warns celebrow.
These findings highlight the need for social media to be more aware of the role they play in spreading climate misinformation and to proactively monitor it. In this way, they can identify and combat the spread of erroneous claims that can undermine real-world action to tackle climate change.