"AI Presidents 4 Climate Action": An Exploration of TikTok and Climate Change Communication

Macey, Nat, Beverly & Evie

Overview of the Project:

Since the industrial revolution, we have been confined to the fossil fuel paradigm and funneled into the dominant mode of energy production, without much consideration for the alternatives. However, in a period of rapidly intensifying climate disruptions and non-renewable depletions, it is imperative to transition to sustainable options. This project aims to increase awareness of different energy sources and their effects on global climate change. Despite many public resources, most people are unaware of the benefits or ease of transitioning to renewable energy. We hope to break down this information gap by targeting the younger generation through the popular social media source, TikTok. We chose this population subset because they are the future. Throughout the multi-decade shift to renewables, this generation will dominate the workforce, the ballots, and the media. They will shape the direction of future policies, and we need their support. Additionally, these younger individuals may have less solidified climate beliefs and may be in the “cautious, disengaged, or doubtful” categories of the Six Americas (Yale & George Mason University). These three climate opinions compose the group that is most malleable. 

For our project, the TikTok videos are essentially the “hook” that aims to draw our audience into our project. 60% of US TikTok users are between the ages 16 and 24, which extrapolates out to 90 million users in this age range. We play upon a popular trend of presidents playing Minecraft. Each video will focus on energy sources or climate change to some degree and at the end, will promote our website linked to the TikTok bio. Our website is more of the educational factor that highlights different energy sources and requests further action. Our videos and website pages tie together with the common goal of signing a petition on the Willow Project. The Willow Project is a massive oil pipeline proposed to run through the National Petroleum Preserve in Alaska. This project will release 9.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. The Willow Project is the antithesis of the transition to renewables, and it is completely deaf to our societal needs. Our TikTok videos and website will all circle around this main idea and advocate for action.

Climate change issues are often seen as aggressive and devastating. When the issues are framed this way, it is overwhelming and may spur inaction. Our approach allows people to interact with the content on their own terms. Viewers can choose to watch, or they can simply scroll right past. The very specific Gen Z humor in the videos is going to appeal to a new audience and may interest people who are not necessarily invested in climate change issues. The content is light and humorous, and climate change is slipped in as secondary to the main point of the video– President’s playing Minecraft. It is important to acknowledge there are risks with this choice (as all framing techniques), such as ostracizing too much of the population or downplaying climate change with humor. This choice was made to start to upend the barriers to solutions, such as the mental and physical drain climate action can bring (Stoknes, 90). This project communicates with this generation in a lowkey, palatable way that is familiar to them.


The Process: 

Our process for this project was a little backward. Despite caution by guest speakers and Professor Huxster, we picked our tactic before our problem. In hindsight, they were probably right, but we had to learn for ourselves. Once our TikTok idea arose, we were stuck on it (to be fair, it is a very fun idea), but it made the formulation of the rest of the project more difficult. We started by focusing on various local legislation on a multitude of different issues. However, the lack of a central theme was challenging. While making the Minecraft videos, some group members noticed the prevalence of many energy sources throughout the game. This inspired us to focus our project entirely on energy and its relation to climate change. All of our TikTok videos incorporate energy to some degree, and the website entirely revolves around the different energy sources found in Minecraft: fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear. 

Part of what makes this project strong is that each of us was able to draw on our individual strengths. Group projects can often be difficult, especially in a group of four. But in this case, we all had unique interests and abilities to bring to the table. This made divvying up the work very easy and uncomplicated. Nat has experience with website building from various other courses; Macey has experience writing a blog in the past and is a writing tutor on campus; Evie enjoys humor and has been prevalent in the activist world; Beverly enjoys playing Minecraft and is knowledgeable in media production (#dreamteam). However, this division of labor has required intense communication throughout all stages of the process. The project would have been easier to move through one element at a time such as from video scripts, to formulating the videos, to building the website, to the blog. However, due to time constraints and plan changes, we had to work on our various elements simultaneously which was challenging.


The Result: 

Our project has had some success in reaching our target audience. As of now, our most-watched video on TikTok has over 1,000 views and our website has over 80 views. However, we can see there is a fairly large gap between simply consuming media and taking the next step. About 4% of viewers continued to our website, assuming all the website views were correlated to the TikTik account. Our goal was 100 website views so are close to this amount, and the more our TikTok account gains popularity, the more likely this percentage will go up. Still, we have exposed over 2,000 people to the ideas of climate change. Even if the information is presented in a comical, untraditional way, these viewers are still receiving information. By nonchalantly talking about climate change, we are normalizing the discussion and hopefully working to depoliticize this issue.  


                                                        Visit our Website: https://energyccc.weebly.com/      

    

                                                        


                                                   Visit our TikTik: AIpresidents4climateaction    



Relation to Class: 

In our videos, we utilize Stoknes’ tactics for effectively communicating about climate change. TikTik has a way of bringing people together even if they are across the world. We want to make these issues feel very “near, human, and personal” as Stoknes suggests (90). This alleviates the issue of distance, one of Stoknes’ five D’s.TikTok is also a great way to reach a lot of people all at once which can provide the foundation for the cultural shifts necessary for societal change (Stoknes, 92). Therefore, spreading climate information across this platform has the potential to increase knowledge across the world and lead to more potential action. 

This technique will also allow us to observe the differences between cognitive reappraisal and willingness to act. Research proposes that as adolescents’ belief in the usefulness of their actions increases, so does their willingness to participate in climate change mitigation behaviors  (Dong et al., 2022). We set up a similar experiment with our final project because we can measure how many TikTok views correspond to further action like viewing the website or signing the petition. 

On our website in the renewable resource section, we use the power of narratives to draw our audience in. Specifically, we provide a “well-being narrative” of the possibilities of our world without fossil fuels. Stoknes highlights the power of a happy story over an apocalyptic one because it points people in the right direction (141).  It avoids the doom and anxiety and instead, inspires people to take action to strive for that better future. This story demonstrates a real potential for us to live almost utopian lives if we actively address climate change. 


Sources:


Dong, X., Geng L. & Rodriguez Casallas, J.D. (2022).How is Cognitive Reappraisal Related to Adolescents’ Willingness to Act on Mitigating Climate Change? The Mediating Role of Climate Change Risk Perception and Believed Usefulness of Actions. Environmental Education Research, 1– 22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2022.2120188

Global Warming’s Six Americas. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. (2023, April 5).        https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/about/projects/global-warmings-six-americas/ 

Stoknes, P.E. (2015). What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming. Chelsea

Green Publishing. 


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