(AU SMH) TikTok Takes On Climate As New Social Activism Sweeps The Net

Sydney Morning Herald - Laura Chung

Tara Bellerose spends 15 to 20 hours a week making videos for Instagram and TikTok from her farm in rural south-west Victoria.

 Inspiration comes from all around the 23-year-old, with each video taking about two hours to make.

The final product is a short video that is engaging, fast and contains colourful captions, images or filters tackling one of the biggest threats facing humanity: climate change.

“There is nothing really to it,” she says. “I don’t have any other hobbies, this is my hobby.”

“I am trying to teach people about animals and wildlife and what the earth has to offer. You can’t force people to change, people don’t like being forced to do stuff, but if you suggest and say, ’look how beautiful our reefs are and how cool these animals are... you can make people care.”

Tara Bellerose, 23, uses her large social media following to talk about the climate crisis.

As a third-generation farmer, Ms Bellerose has seen the impacts of climate change first hand, with floods and droughts impacting crop growth. “Dad says the weather is different from when he was my age,” she says.

“When I saw the effect of humanity, I wanted to learn more, and use my platform to teach people about the ‘invisible’ day-to-day impacts we have as humans and try to show them the creatures they don’t see but harm indirectly.”

She’s been on social media since 2016, but it wasn’t until she watched David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II in 2018 that she pivoted her content to address the climate crisis.

Tara Bellerose is turning to social media to talk about the effects of climate change.

Ms Bellerose has a large following: 585,000 followers on TikTok, 12,000 followers on Instagram and 33,000 subscribers on YouTube. But there’s an ugly side to social media.

She’s been subject to death threats - at one stage she was getting one a week. One such message sent last year said: “I hope you kill yourself or get hit by a truck. I really hope that happens to you. Or you get malaria and just die because you are a waste of space. You shouldn’t exist.”

But Ms Bellerose is matter-of-fact about it - she’s tackling an existential crisis, something that’s much bigger than a keyboard warrior. It’s also part of making controversial content, she says.

American climate influencer Alaina Wood says she started using TikTok during the pandemic but never intended to make content addressing climate change

American climate influencer Alaina Wood says she’ll decide what content to produce based on what’s trending online, what she’s passionate about or what she wants to teach the public about.

It can take her a minimum of four hours to research, script, film and edit one video.

The 25-year-old Tennessee resident started using Tiktok at the start of the pandemic to pass the time and never intended to post videos about the climate crisis.

“I started communicating about the climate crisis after I saw videos on TikTok insinuating that people have to be 100 per cent vegan, zero waste, and car free to be an environmentalist,” she says.

"I posted my first climate video in response to these ‘perfect environmentalist’ videos to help people understand that you don’t have to be 100 per cent anything to be a good environmentalist.

“I then started communicating more about science and policy after I noticed the lack of creators doing so on TikTok.”

Ms Wood, who has 9,394 Instagram followers and 294,500 followers on TikTok, is also the co-founder of eco.tok - a collaboration of creators providing education on climate change, activism, and science.

She was recently interviewed by Teen Vogue about her online activism and inspiring collective action - highlighting just how much young people care and are actively leading the climate debate.

Influencer Alaina Wood is using social media to discuss climate.

Curtin University Professor Crystal Abidin digital anthropologist and ethnographer of vernacular internet cultures says Australian social media began to engage with the climate moment during the climate marches and Black Summer bushfires in 2019.

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Young people began sharing their experiences through short videos or through memes, promoting the message of climate activist Greta Thunberg, or expressing outrage over political failings.

She adds that using social media to address the climate crisis can result in greater awareness, but it might not necessarily translate into concrete action given the young age of many users.

“It’s a different type of activism. It’s one way for them to be included and participate in civil society until they have the resources to act or to do something more.”

Links

• The Power of Social Media to Fight Climate Change
• How social media is driving the climate change conversation
• Credibility of climate change denial in social media - Nature
• Eight ways to make your climate change social media posts matter – from a communication expert
• Social media is reducing climate change debates to your views on veganism
• Gen Z, Millennials Stand Out for Climate Change Activism, Social Media Engagement With Issue