Editorial
Climate Change and Digital Advertising, The Social Media Menace
The emergence of social media had created a plethora of opportunities. Social Media succeeded enormously in bringing the people from various countries and ethnic background in a single platform to communicate, share and collaborate. Ensuring the free flow of information, freedom of speech and egalitarianism; these centralized, monolithic and tech oligarchs also done an enormous damage to the human society. The Facebook’s intervention of UK and US elections are the most recent one.
The recently published report of the UK based think-tank ‘Influencemap.org’ elaborately explains how the pollution-causing oil and gas industry giants cunningly used ‘FACEBOOK’ to create ‘good image’ about their brand and business. As a policy, Facebook supports climate-protecting initiatives. At the same time, the same social media is not serious about climate commitments. Otherwise, it wouldn’t allow a whopping 25,147 ads from just 25 oil and gas giants and it enable them to earn nearly $10 million. These sugarcoated ads have been shown over 431 million times in the Facebook, as per the Influencemap !
These manipulative ads misinformed how the oil industry helps the economy, provides jobs, reduces greenhouse gases, affordable, reliable, eco-friendlier (!) , makes the nation energy independent and provides energy leadership. The 25-oil and gas company list includes but not limited to Exxon Mobil, American Petroleum Institute, One Alaska, The Williams Companies, Texas Oil & Gas Association and BP etc.
This is certainly worrisome trend. Just now, when we received a disturbing climate report from the prestigious IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), this Social Media Trend report of Influencemap presses the alarm bell for us to wake up and be vigilant.
By
Editor-in-Chief
For INSTANEWSGRAM