Online communication about climate change is central to public discourse around this contested issue. Facebook is a dominant social media platform known to be a major source of information and online influence, yet discussion of climate change on the platform has remained largely unstudied due to difficulties in accessing data. This paper utilises Facebook's repository of social/political ads to study how climate change is framed as an issue in adverts placed by different actors. Sponsored content is a strategic investment and presumably intended to be persuasive, so patterns of who pays for adverts and how those adverts frame the issue can reveal large-scale trends in public discourse. We show that most money spent on climate-related messaging is targeted at users in the US, GB and CA. While the number of advert impressions correlates with total spend by an actor, there is a secondary effect of unpaid social sharing which can substantially affect the number of impressions per dollar spent. Most spend in the US is by political actors, while environmental non-governmental organisations dominate spend in GB. Analysis shows that climate change solutions are well represented in GB, while climate change impacts such as extreme weather events are strongly represented in the US and CA. Different actor types frame the issue of climate change in different ways; political actors position the issue as party political and a point of difference between candidates, whereas environmental NGOs frame climate change as the focus of collective action and social mobilisation. Overall, our study provides a first empirical exploration of climate-related advertising on Facebook. It shows the diversity of actors seeking to use Facebook as a platform for their campaigns and how they utilise different topic frames to persuade users to act.
翻译:有关气候变化的在线沟通是围绕这一争议问题的公开讨论的核心。 Facebook是一个主流社交媒体平台,已知是信息的主要来源和在线影响,但平台上关于气候变化的讨论由于难以获取数据而基本未受研究。 本文利用Facebook的社会/政治广告库研究气候变化如何被设计成不同行为者张贴的广告中的一个问题。 赞助内容是一种战略投资,其意图可能是有说服力的,因此由谁来支付广告费,以及这些广告如何影响这一问题在公共讨论中揭示大规模趋势。 我们显示,大部分用于气候相关信息平台的资金是针对美国、英国和加州的用户的。 虽然广告印象与行为者的全部开支相关,但无报酬的社会分享的副作用可能极大地影响美元花销的印象。 在美国的大部分支出是政治行为者,而环境非政府组织在GB的支出则占主导地位。 分析表明,气候变化解决方案在GB中得到了很好的体现,而气候变化影响如极端的天气事件在美国、英国的用户中,而作为政治领袖的焦点,在政治领袖和政党的视野中则展示了一种政治立场。