Grassroots Lobbying: Social Media
So you want to make a difference to climate change? An easy way to do this is to use your social media as a tool to advocate for climate change.
You have the ability to reach huge audiences, sway peoples’ opinions, find new supporters for climate action, disseminate information about climate change and coordinate other forms of action. All of this can be done from your home, at virtually no cost. Many successful grassroots movements have used social media (#metoo) - we also can make use of it!
Examples of Use of Social Media
Create a post about an issue that you care about (e.g. Australian Climate Dividend) for your friends/followers.
Try to get a discussion going. Keep creating posts on the same issue.Sign and share petitions on issues that you care about. Start your own petition on your issues — use organisations like Change.org and Getup which are interested in social reform.
On Facebook, join groups that share issues that you care about. Like and share their posts to other groups. Create a post for that group and try to get discussion going. Create a group yourself and post engaging, up to date material and commentary.
Follow and share material from climate change influencers on Twitter.
On YouTube, find material relating to your issue and share it.
Where To Find Good Information To Share
Follow particular thought leaders and share their dialogue — share tweets and posts across various social media platforms.
Follow people who are opposed to your beliefs and share their dialogue — with a comment.
Particular newsletters and sites such as Renew Economy, the Conversation, the Guardian and the Age.
Join CCL Australia on Facebook where there is some in-depth discussion, as well as on the CCL Slack where people share great information and links.
The CCL Way…
When posting as part of the CCL movement, keep our values in mind. We are optimistic, non-partisan and our posts showcase science and integrity. Rather than using social media to attack or criticise, we use it to provide solutions.
Tips for Successful Posts
Include an image, a drawing or a video link. Make it attention grabbing.
Keep it brief.
Use links for more detail — if you have an article to share; put in an intro, provide a summary or make a comment - then include the link for the full article.
Be active — it is important to engage with your followers or within groups.
Aim to create happiness, satisfaction and inspiration — people tend to read these tweets or posts.
Use humour!
Share stories, photos and/or links featuring the important work being done by CCL.
If you start a campaign or a group, think about effective # tags that you can use to group your posts together. Keep monitoring it, interact with the other posters, comment and respond to them, keep posting new material.
Keep your tone authentic and engaging; people who show that they genuinely care about climate change and who express their feelings are more likely to get engagement from their audience.
What Next?
Create a post about climate change and put it on social media! Share it to CCL Australia or hashtag #CCLAustralia.
Resources:
Team up with others from CCL to write a social media post by enrolling in our Climate Action Workshop.
Watch this video delivered by our training team in November 2021.
