Climate irresponsibility on social media. A critical approach to “high-carbon visibility discourse”

Abstract

Human GHG emissions are entering networked everyday relations. On social media, users potentially "reveal" their carbon footprints when they post pictures of a beef-based dinner or intercontinental travel. As the increasing urgency of climate change coincides with people's increasingly online-oriented lifestyles, we suggest that social-media research should devote attention to the ways in which users overlook, hide, limit, or casually articulate their high-carbon oriented lifestyles in digital space. This would contribute important knowledge about the role of social-media communication concerning climate change as an individual responsibility, and requires a concentration on how status updates become loaded with ideological meaning (highcarbon visibility discourse). The purpose is to present a framework for critical analyses of visual disclosure of carbon footprints in social media use. Media theory, semiotics, network theory and critical theory are combined to theorize how users' activities on social media become high-carbon oriented; their promotion of a business-as-usual stance; and how this operates ideologically through reification, legitimation and unification.

“How is he entitled to say this?”: Constructing the identities of experts, ordinary people, and presenters in Swedish television series on climate change

“…At the same time, the very content of expert statements on climate change varies depending on the political and cultural context. Expert interventions in the media in many European countries tend to take an alarmist tone in arguing for climate change action, as previous studies have shown in Austria (Hermann et al, 2017), Britain (Schmid-Petri & Arlt, 2016, Germany (Grundmann & Scott, 2014;Taddicken & Reif, 2016), and -especially importantly for our article -Sweden (Berglez et al, 2009). Other contexts have seen a stronger presence of climate change sceptics -for example, in the US (Boykoff, 2013), but also France (Grundmann & Scott, 2014).…”

Google Search and the creation of ignorance: The case of the climate crisis

“…They are also not among the so-called Your-Money-Your-Life (YMYL) topics, which these guidelines single out for particular attention since low-quality pages on topics with this designation are considered potentially harmful. Instead, presumably resting on the assumption that users see through the limitations of the search engine results and overcome these by amending the search term appropriately, the 'sustainable choice' necessarily involves further input to change the default settings in search of content challenging the prevalent 'high-carbon visibility discourse' (Berglez and Olausson, 2021) Just as the widespread public and commercial discourse that its data is based upon, Google often defaults options that involve one of the heavier burdens on the environment. Proctor (2008), when suggesting ignorance as a resource to further investigation, assumes that there needs to be awareness of ignorance and the intention to overcome it.…”

“…They are also not among the so-called Your-Money-Your-Life (YMYL) topics, which these guidelines single out for particular attention since low-quality pages on topics with this designation are considered potentially harmful. Instead, presumably resting on the assumption that users see through the limitations of the search engine results and overcome these by amending the search term appropriately, the ‘sustainable choice’ necessarily involves further input to change the default settings in search of content challenging the prevalent ‘high-carbon visibility discourse’ (Berglez and Olausson, 2021)…”

“…The search engine results page suggests that the predominant meaning of food is to have something convenient or sometimes healthy – but not necessarily something good for the planet – , of clothes as something that needs to be bought first hand – and not as something to use, swap, share and mend – , and of places to be primarily related by travelling between them, typically, by plane. This way ‘high-carbon visibility discourses’, to use Berglez and Olausson's (2021) terminology, are reproduced in search engine results, and with it a passive ignorance about the multitudes of human contributions to environmental issues such as climate change. Therefore, although Google shows some consideration for the ‘sustainable choice’ as a gradient of emissions, by prioritising some semantic interpretations of search terms and not showing alternatives, ignorances related to the climate crisis and of the radical changes required are part of the search engine's basic design (Haider et al, 2022).…”

Provocative greenness and staged rebellion: Youth’s rhetorical performances of environmental citizenship

“…Political, mediated, and educational environmental discourses increasingly emphasise the moral responsibility of individuals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, thereby situating environmental citizenship as a matter of individuals' duties and consumer action (Berglez, Höijer, and Olausson 2009;Parr 2015;Dale, Mathai, and Puppim de Oliveira 2016;Dimick 2015;Saether 2017). In this article, I examine a sample of argumentative debate articles and speeches written by young people aged 13-21, who advocate individual consumer action to tackle the challenges of climate change.…”