When #ClimateScam is trending: rethinking climate comms

Bendell, Jem ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0765-4413 (2022) When #ClimateScam is trending: rethinking climate comms. In: COP27: 27th Annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, 6-18 November 2022, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

We have a communications problem. Just as political support for climate action is growing, so political resistance to climate action is also growing. The use of the hashtag #ClimateScam has exploded since July of this year. From never exceeding more than 3,000 tweets in any month up to June 2022, it has been used 70,000-100,000 times per month in the four months since. Compare that to the hashtag #ClimateJustice, which has averaged about 30,000 tweets per month for the last two years and almost hit 100,000 unique tweets in the month of COP26 in Glasgow, with all the world’s media attention. But now? #ClimateScam is being used two and a half times for every #ClimateJustice tweet throughout the last 4 months. These twitter trends are one indicator of a growing resistance to climate action. Here, at a climate event, we might ask: how can people dismiss something happening before their very eyes? Today I’m offering an answer to that question as a professor and political advisor specialising in strategic communications. I assess that resistance to climate action is growing partly because of the bad way climate issues have been communicated to the public by experts and politicians. Badly technical, badly elitist and now badly authoritarian. I believe that reflects a self-serving response from the establishment that is partly to blame for the current backlash, represented by this data on social media, that I share for the first time today.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Speech)
Departments:	Institute of Business, Industry and Leadership > Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS)
Depositing User:	Anna Lupton
Date Deposited:	16 Nov 2022 14:41
Last Modified:	13 Jan 2024 14:15
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/6684

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