Digital Environmentalism: The Role of Social Media in Shaping Climate Awareness and Action

Deepak Kumar  Saini; Arzoo  Rana

doi:10.47540/ijsei.v6i3.2344

Authors

Deepak Kumar Saini Department of Botany & Microbiology, Govt. KRG PG College, India
Arzoo Rana Sociology, Maharaja Chhatrasal Bundelkhand University (MCBU), India

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47540/ijsei.v6i3.2344

Keywords:

Climate Change, Digital Environmentalism, Environmental Activism, Social Media

Abstract

Climate change represents one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. This review examines the multifaceted role of social media in contemporary environmental movements, exploring how digital platforms have transformed climate communication, analyzing the effectiveness of digital campaigns, and addressing the challenges and limitations of online environmental activism. Through a comprehensive synthesis of recent scholarship on digital environmentalism, this article provides insights into both the potential and pitfalls of social media as a tool for climate action. The findings reveal that social media serves as a powerful tool for raising climate awareness and mobilizing action when used strategically, while also facing significant limitations, including misinformation, the digital divide, and platform dependency. The review concludes that hybrid approaches combining digital and traditional organizing methods, alongside intentional efforts to bridge accessibility gaps and advance environmental justice, represent the most promising path forward for effective climate action.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Ackland, R., & O'Neil, M. (2011). Online collective identity: The case of the environmental movement. Social Networks, 33(3), 177-190.

Anderson, A. (2013). “Together we can save the Arctic”: Celebrity advocacy and the Rio Earth Summit. Celebrity Studies, 4(3), 339-352.

Anderson, A. (2014). Media, environment and the network society. Palgrave Macmillan.

Ballantyne, A. G. (2016). Climate change communication: What can we learn from communication theory? WIREs Climate Change, 7(3), 329-344.

Basch, C. H., Yalamanchili, B., & Fera, J. (2022). #Climate Change on TikTok: A Content Analysis of Videos. Journal of Community Health, 47(1), 163-167.

Belotti, F., Donato, S., Bussoletti, A., & Comunello, F. (2022). Youth Activism for Climate on and Beyond Social Media: Insights from FridaysForFuture-Rome. International Journal of Press/Politics, 27(3), 718-737.

Boulianne, S. (2015). Social media use and participation: A meta-analysis of current research. Information, Communication & Society, 18(5), 524-538.

Boulianne, S., Lalancette, M., & Ilkiw, D. (2020). “School strike 4 climate”: Social media and the international youth protest on climate change. Media and Communication, 8(2), 208-218.

Brevini, B. (2012). Black boxes are not green: Carbon emissions and hidden environmental impacts of ICT. Proceedings of the 4th IFIP Conference on Sustainable Internet and ICT for Sustainability.

Brosch, T. (2025). From individual to collective climate emotions and actions: a review. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 61, 101466.

Bucher, T. (2012). Want to be on the top? Algorithmic power and the threat of invisibility on Facebook. New Media & Society, 14(7), 1164-1180.

Buhre, F. (2024). Personalising climate change—how activists from Fridays for Future visualise climate action on Instagram. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11, Article 1058.

Bussoletti, A., Treré, E., & Comunello, F. (2025). A media ecology of ecological media? Conceptualizing environment-oriented communication and its digital footprint in climate change activism. New Media & Society, 27(4), 2024-2045.

Castells, M. (2015). Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the internet age (2nd ed.). Polity Press.

Cho, C. H., Guidry, R. P., Hageman, A. M., & Patten, D. M. (2012). Do actions speak louder than words? An empirical investigation of corporate environmental reputation. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 37(1), 14-25.

Cox, R. (2013). Environmental communication and the public sphere (3rd ed.). Sage Publications.

De Moor, J., Uba, K., Wahlström, M., Wennerhag, M., & De Vydt, M. (2020). Protest for a future II: Composition, mobilization and motives of the participants in Fridays For Future climate protests on 20-27 September, 2019, in 19 cities around the world.

De Veirman, M., Cauberghe, V., & Hudders, L. (2017). Marketing through Instagram influencers: The impact of number of followers and product divergence on brand attitude. International Journal of Advertising, 36(5), 798-828.

Dekoninck, H., & Schmuck, D. (2024). The “greenfluence”: Following environmental influencers, parasocial relationships, and youth's participation behavior. New Media & Society, 26(11), 6615-6635.

Dekoninck, H., Van Houtven, E., & Schmuck, D. (2025). Virtual nature experiences on Instagram: How greenfluencers' nature posts drive climate action. International Journal of Advertising, 44(2), 620-650.

Earl, J., & Kimport, K. (2011). Digitally enabled social change: Activism in the internet age. MIT Press.

Fisher, D. R. (2019). The broader importance of #FridaysForFuture. Nature Climate Change, 9(6), 430-431.

Fisher, D. R. (2024). Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action. Columbia University Press.

Fung, I. C., Duke, C. H., Finch, K. C., Snook, K. R., Tseng, P. L., Hernandez, A. C., Gambhir, M., Fu, K. W., & Tse, Z. T. H. (2016). Ebola virus disease and social media: A systematic review. American Journal of Infection Control, 44(12), 1660-1671.

Gannon, V., & Prothero, A. (2018). Beauty bloggers and YouTubers as a community of practice. Journal of Marketing Management, 34(7-8), 592-619.

Goldstein, N. J., Cialdini, R. B., & Griskevicius, V. (2008). A room with a viewpoint: Using social norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(3), 472-482.

Graves, L. (2018). Understanding the promise and limits of automated fact-checking. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Guo, C., & Saxton, G. D. (2014). Tweeting social change: How social media are changing nonprofit advocacy. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 43(1), 57-79.

Haastrup, H. K. (2023). Having fun saving the climate: The climate influencer, emotional labour, and storytelling as counter-narrative on TikTok. Persona Studies, 9(1), 36-51.

Hackett, R. A., Forde, S., Gunster, S., & Foxwell-Norton, K. (2017). Journalism and climate crisis: Public engagement, media alternatives. Routledge.

Halupka, M. (2018). The legitimisation of clicktivism. Australian Journal of Political Science, 53(1), 130-141.

Hart, P. S., Feldman, L., Choi, S., Chinn, S., & Hiaeshutter-Rice, D. (2024). Climate Change Advocacy and Engagement on Social Media. Science Communication, 46(6), 733-759.

Hautea, S., Parks, P., Takahashi, B., & Zeng, J. (2021). Showing they care (or don't): Affective publics and ambivalent climate activism on TikTok. Social Media + Society, 7(2), 1-14.

IPCC. (2021). Climate change 2021: The physical science basis. Cambridge University Press.

Jenkins, H., Shresthova, S., Gamber-Thompson, L., Kligler-Vilenchik, N., & Zimmerman, A. (2016). By any media necessary: The new youth activism. NYU Press.

Josefy, M., Dean, T. J., Albert, L. S., & Fitza, M. A. (2017). The role of community in crowdfunding success: Evidence on cultural attributes in funding campaigns to “Save the Local Theater”. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 41(2), 161-182.

Kirilenko, A. P., & Stepchenkova, S. O. (2014). Public microblogging on climate change: One year of Twitter worldwide. Global Environmental Change, 26, 171-182.

Knupfer, H., Neureiter, A., & Matthes, J. (2023). From social media diet to public riot? Engagement with “greenfluencers” and young social media users' environmental activism. Computers in Human Behavior, 139, 107527.

Kristofferson, K., White, K., & Peloza, J. (2014). The nature of slacktivism: How the social observability of an initial act of token support affects subsequent prosocial action. Journal of Consumer Research, 40(6), 1149-1166.

Liu, W., Zhao, X., Zhan, M., & Hernandez, S. (2024). Streaming Disasters on TikTok: Examining social mediated crisis communication, public engagement, and emotional responses during the 2023 Maui Wildfire. Environmental Communication, 18(7), 945-963.

Lyon, T. P., & Montgomery, A. W. (2015). The means and end of greenwash. Organization & Environment, 28(2), 223-249.

Malafaia, C., & Meriluoto, T. (2024). Making a Deal with the Devil? Portuguese and Finnish Activists' Everyday Negotiations on the Value of Social Media. Social Movement Studies, 23(2), 190-206.

Markowitz, D. M., Laha, R., Perone, B. P., Pea, R. D., & Bailenson, J. N. (2018). Immersive virtual reality field trips facilitate learning about climate change. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2364.

Mede, N. G., & Schroeder, R. (2024). The "Greta effect" on social media: A systematic review of research on Thunberg's impact on digital climate change communication. Environmental Communication, 18(3), 345-363.

Neumayer, C., & Svensson, J. (2016). Activism and radical politics in the digital age: Towards a typology. Convergence, 22(2), 131-146.

Nguyen, H. (2023). TikTok as Learning Analytics Data: Framing Climate Change and Data Practices. Proceedings of the 13th Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference, 45-55.

Nieto-Sandoval, A. G., & Ferré-Pavia, C. (2024). Communicating Climate Change on TikTok During the Climate Summits: From the Environmental Issues to the Politicization of Discourse. Environmental Communication, 18(5), 569-588.

Nwafor, G. U., Aghaebe, S. E., Bartholomew, C. E., & Umuze, A. N. (2024). Investigating the Effectiveness of TikTok in Promoting Public Awareness and Engagement on Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Measures in Nigeria. Asian Journal of Education and Social Studies, 50(12), 279-291.

Papacharissi, Z. (2015). Affective publics and structures of storytelling: Sentiment, events and mediality. Information, Communication & Society, 18(2), 174-187.

Pearce, W., Niederer, S., Özkula, S. M., & Sánchez Querubín, N. (2019). The social media life of climate change: Platforms, publics, and future imaginaries. WIREs Climate Change, 10(2), e569.

Pickerill, J. (2003). Cyberprotest: Environmental activism online. Manchester University Press.

Pihkala, P. (2020). Anxiety and the ecological crisis: An analysis of eco-anxiety and climate anxiety. Sustainability, 12(19), 7836.

Rocha-Gomes, M., Rodrigues, A., Oliveira, M., & Silva, P. (2025). Harnessing deep learning to monitor people's perceptions towards climate change on social media. Scientific Reports, 15, 3842.

Rooney, M. B., Gregg, R. M., Thiery, W., Hsiang, S., Cutter, S., Jones, B., Jewett, L., & Dahl, K. (2017). Communicating climate science. In Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment (Vol. 1, pp. 464-476). U.S. Global Change Research Program.

San Cornelio, G., Martorell, S., & Ardèvol, E. (2024). “My goal is to make sustainability mainstream”: Emerging visual narratives on the environmental crisis on Instagram. Frontiers in Communication, 8, Article 1265466.

Sanford, M., Witkowska, M., Gifford, R., & Formanowicz, M. (2023). Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 1099331.

Schäfer, M. S. (2025). Social media in climate change communication: State of the field, new developments and the emergence of generative AI. International Journal of Press/Politics, 30(1), 98-118.

Schlosberg, D., & Collins, L. B. (2014). From environmental to climate justice: Climate change and the discourse of environmental justice. WIREs Climate Change, 5(3), 359-374.

Segerberg, A., & Bennett, W. L. (2011). Social media and the organization of collective action: Using Twitter to explore the ecologies of two climate change protests. The Communication Review, 14(3), 197-215.

Sein, M. K., & Harindranath, G. (2004). Conceptualizing the ICT artifact: Toward understanding the role of ICT in national development. The Information Society, 20(1), 15-24.

Sultana, B. C., Prodhan, M. T. R., Alam, E., Sohel, M. S., Bari, A. B. M. M., Pal, S. C., Islam, M. K., & Islam, A. R. M. T. (2024). A systematic review of the nexus between climate change and social media: Present status, trends, and future challenges. Frontiers in Communication, 9, Article 1301400.

Sunstein, C. R. (2017). #Republic: Divided democracy in the age of social media. Princeton University Press.

Treré, E. (2019). Hybrid media activism: Ecologies, imaginaries, algorithms. Routledge.

van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., Rosenthal, S., & Maibach, E. (2017). Inoculating the public against misinformation about climate change. Global Challenges, 1(2), 1600008.

van der Ven, H., Corry, D., Elnur, R., Provost, V. J., & Syukron, M. (2024). Generative AI and social media may exacerbate the climate crisis. Global Environmental Politics, 24(2), 9-18.

van Dijk, J. (2020). The digital divide. Polity Press.

Veil, S. R., Buehner, T., & Palenchar, M. J. (2011). A work-in-process literature review: Incorporating social media in risk and crisis communication. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 19(2), 110-122.

Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146-1151.

Vu, H. T., Blomberg, M., Seo, H., Liu, Y., Shayesteh, F., & Do, H. V. (2021). Social media and environmental activism: Framing climate change on Facebook by global NGOs. Science Communication, 43(1), 91-115.

Weidlich, M., & Kropp, C. (2023). Correcting climate change misinformation on social media: Reciprocal relationships between correcting others, anger, and environmental activism. Computers in Human Behavior, 143, Article 107705.

Williams, H. T., McMurray, J. R., Kurz, T., & Lambert, F. H. (2015). Network analysis reveals open forums and echo chambers in social media discussions of climate change. Global Environmental Change, 32, 126-138.

Yang, G. (2016). Narrative agency in hashtag activism: The case of #BlackLivesMatter. Media and Communication, 4(4), 13-17.