The corporate "bigs," climate denial, and social media

Many of us didn't need a study to know full well this is happening. But it's good to have it documented and proved.

From 2008 to 2023, nine of the nation’s largest oil, agrichemical, and plastics trade groups and corporations posted thousands of tweets on the social media platform X, and their messaging on environmental issues was strikingly “obstructive” for climate policy and action, a study published (in January) in the journal PLOS Climate concludes.

The study found that all of the organizations, including the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), were mentioned by at least four of the other groups – helping to essentially create an echo chamber for similar messages. The groups also frequently tagged regulators and the media in their posts, with researchers finding the Environmental Protection Agency was tagged 795 times and the Wall Street Journal, the most mentioned media organization, tagged 517 times out of more than 125,000 X posts.

“Our study suggests that climate obstruction in different industries is more coordinated than is generally recognized,” said co-author Jennie Stephens, professor of Sustainability Science and Policy at Northeastern University and of Climate Justice at the National University of Ireland Maynooth.

“Combined with the high engagement of the petrochemical derivative and fuel sectors with government regulatory, policy, and political entities in the energy and environmental in particular, this suggests strategic attempts to undermine and subvert climate policy through social media,” the authors wrote. - DeSmog

Big Gas profiteering from Ukraine war

I know that things like this have been going on forever. But it's nonetheless vile and despicable, when unspeakably greedy and selfish people use death and destruction in ways like this to engorge their wealth and power.

Europe’s gas industry has ramped up its messaging since Russia invaded Ukraine, exploiting fears over energy security to justify projects that risk locking the continent into long-term dependence on fossil fuels, DeSmog can reveal.

Four big industry groups began to post many more tweets portraying investments in gas and related infrastructure as the key to secure energy supplies soon after the invasion started — and maintained this strategy throughout last year, an analysis of their social media accounts found.

The lobby groups were Gas Infrastructure Europe; Gas For Climate; Eurogas; and the European branch of the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers, which represent companies operating pipelines, gas storage, and infrastructure to import liquefied natural gas (LNG). Members include oil majors such as Shell, BP, TotalEnergies, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Eni, which have posted record profits off the back of the energy crisis triggered by the invasion. - DeSmog

Does social media just reinforce gullibility?

I think many people use Twitter (for example) well, in informative and/or entertaining ways. And I'm never a fan of when essayists just blithely use collective pronouns like "we" and "our." Seems kind of presumptuous, to me. So by no means do I agree with everything in this article. But I do find it thought-provoking, and that's always cool.

Whether you’re R-Patz or a tiresome “influencer activist,” you act in response to an existing appetite: you spin a yarn about getting suspended for school for trying to save some snails, you promote the healing power of “perineum sunning” on Instagram, you tweet progressive-sounding nonsense about queer people in Ukraine that conflates several categories of “marginalized people” in a coloring book-level analysis of the current Russian invasion because the vibes just seem right. It’s what’s expected. Who really cares if it’s not true?

Content is content and all press is good press. Whether Pattinson really did lay down some sick beats in the Batcape is immaterial: Search for the answer and all you’ll find is page after page of music news sites repeating the claim rather than verifying it. Details and nuance don’t make for snappy headlines and successful SEO. And why would they? We’ve seen over and over that there are few genuinely worrisome or irreperable repercussions for lying, grifting, and fabulism online.

It’s no wonder, then, that in the eyes of the wider public, the “blue tick” journalist has fallen far lower in esteem than the entrepreneurial everyman. Unfortunately, both are infected with posters’ disease, or rather, the impulse to literally just say shit; the void of trustworthy news sources has fast been filled by hucksters (Joe Rogan), conspiracists (QAnon), and celebrities from both the right and the nominal left. And the components of critical thinking—the shared understanding of things like context, subtext, hyperbole, and metaphor—have been consistently undermined by the face-value, rapid-response urgency of social media. - Bitch Media