đżWild Ones #69: Environmental Communication Digest
Digital Commons, Democracy and Twitter + The Future of Nature Conversation + Humanistic Environmental Communication + More!
Hi everyone, welcome back to Wild Ones, a (usually) weekly digest by me, Gavin Lamb, about news, ideas, research, and tips in environmental communication. If youâre new, welcome! You can read more about why I started Wild Ones here. Sign up here to get these digests in your inbox:
đ What Iâm reading
I thought Iâd share some of the perspectives Iâve been reading this past week about the Musk Twitter takeover. I kind of wanted to write about other stuff, but felt the need to write something, partly because I use Twitter often (probably too much). Itâs a great place to connect with other researchers, writers, educators, journalists and activists at the environment/communication nexus. But also because, it seems to me, weâre entering a new period of critical public discourse about what the future of communication platforms like Twitter should look like, or if they should even exist, at least in their current form. However, for better or worse, these online platforms will continue to be an important space for environmental communication (and miscommunication) in the public sphere as we move deeper into the 2020s, as our last decade to really get this green transition going if we want to avoid âcatastrophic climate breakdown.â
Iâve been trying to get a sense of the debate going on right now about Twitter among the environmental communities I follow. One interesting perspective I read came from environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben, who sums up well why people are leaving the platform after Musk bought Twitter, writing in his newsletter a couple of days ago:
âwith 400,000 followers on Twitter Iâm loath to walk away from it, but also increasingly disgusted by the hold it has on my life but more importantly on our world. I doubt we can cool the planet, or defend democracy, if we canât do a better job.â
The âdeeperâ problem, as McKibben sees it, is not the particular tweaks to Twitter that Musk wants to do, but that the digital media ecosystem itself is increasingly a source of pollution in our communicative spaces just as fossil fuels pollute our physical spaces. The solution, he says, is to âmake lessâ of both kinds of pollution:
âUbiquityâomnipresenceâis the current state of the digital world. But the volume is too high; the vibrations from that ever-more-powerful engine are beginning to shake the boat apart.â
McKibben sees the challenge weâre up against as the ubiquity of social media in our lives and the toll this attention-saturating ubiquity of social media takes on our well being, which I think is a very important point.
For example, many of us have probably heard the story about Steve Jobs, Bill Gates (and many other Silicon Valley tech CEOs) refusing to allow their kids to use social media. âThis anecdote is widely circulated, and resonates powerfully with many audiences,â write political theorists Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams, âbecause it seems to crystallise a dilemma that faces any attempt to reflect on the specificity of the human condition in the twenty-first century: are digital media, social media and network culture essentially empowering or disempowering?â
As Gilbert and Williams further argue in a recent essay describing their research on âdemocracy in the age of social mediaâ: âThe power of platforms is not just a matter of their omnipresence or their power to shape our channels of communication. It is also a fact of hard economics.â
In other words, the thing about a âplatformâ is that it derives both its usefulness and its power by monopolizing a communicative space, in an endless drive to become âan infrastructure upon which other systems dependâŚâ and âcarving out the channels through which future developments will flow, or be held back, etching out the space for possible human action throughout the planet.âÂ
On a side note, this is a problem with digital platforms that I wrote about way back in June on Wild Ones on Bram BĂźscherâs fascinating book, The Truth about Nature: Environmentalism in the Era of Post-truth Politics and Platform Capitalism (2020). Writing about the challenges of communicating environmental issues through social media, BĂźscher argues that âSharing truths about nature through online new media to counter post-truth has the unintended effect of reinforcing the structural dynamics responsible for environmental crisis.â While this argument is a bit abstract, his main point is that Twitter and other digital platforms donât work as the kinds of communicative spaces we imagine them to be: something like, as Elon Musk puts it, âa digital public squareâ where millions of people can share ideas to enable mutual understanding and empower action in a global digital commons.
For example, climate scientist Peter Kalmus describes Twitter as a âcommons,â albeit struggling to become a functional and democratic one âdespite how it startedâ as a for profit business run by ârich capitalists seeking to enclose [it] for their own profit/rentsâ:
I think this is mostly right. Whatever Twitter becomes (or whatever comes after it) should âresemble a public utility,â that promotes the kinds of interactions that enable deliberative democracy, rather than its current design built on capturing as much of our attention as possible regardless of the kinds of interactions this promotes. But I wonder if Kalmusâ hope to shift Twitter towards a more democratic public commons is possible, or desirable even, and better scrapped altogether for something else? Some researchers who study Twitter for a living have argued that there are really only two options moving forward, âstatus quoâ or âdystopia.â
For example, climate communicator Andrew Revkin recently argued for staying on Twitter, listing several reasons why people should embrace the platform as is: by strategically engaging with its positive sides while protecting yourself from its âpoisonousâ sides. Deen Freelon, associate professor of Journalism and Media at UNC-Chapel Hill, dives deeper into status quo/dystopic possibilities in a recent thread.
While these views seem to see our options as either embracing the status quo, or watching Twitter descend into dystopia, Tristan Harris, who co-founded the Center for Humane Technology, seems to embrace the possibility for a radically improved Twitter that actually serves as a pro-democratic digital commons, rather than just claim to be one. But only if we fundamentally redesign it from the ground up:
âTwitter is a tool for understanding whatâs going on in the world, and it was not designed from the ground up to enable good conversation or good sense making. And every attempt to try to enable it to be better for good conversation or good sense making, is like taking an ancient Roman gladiator stadium, with the tigers and the lions and the balls and the chains with the angry crowds and saying, âwell, can we add an ID check before you get in to the gladiator stadium.â Sure thatâd be niceâŚbut can we change the game from being a Roman gladiator stadium.â
The point Tristan makes on his podcast is that many of the current debates about Twitter focus on how much âfree speechâ or âmoderationâ should shape its future as a democratic digital commons. But for him, this debate misses what Twitter is designed to be, and only be: a good advertising and attention-grabbing machine, not a good sense-making and democratic machine.
Finally, one personâs perspective I was especially curious to hear about all this was Shoshana Zuboffâs, Professor Emerita at Harvard and author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. When I checked her Twitter profile, I was glad to find this thread that she posted about the situation. But it gave me a flash of cognitive dissonance too, as I both appreciated Twitter for enabling me to engage directly with researchers like Zuboff, while also realizing Twitter probably needs to go to make way for something new.
âFriends, Elon sees Twitter as the âcommon digital town square,âbut this âtown" is not Our Town. It is Muskville. A public square isn't owned by billionaire megalomaniacs. It belongs to the people, ruled by democracy. Instead we obsess over a man we never elected to govern. Today Elon says Twitter will not be a âHellscape.â But tomorrow he may awaken craving Hell. Society is at his mercy.
This is vast unaccountable power that leaves us bystanders to our own future. Sound familiar? Weâve begged Mr. Zuckerberg to end the social wreckage, honor privacy, stop disinformation and hate. It all just gets worse. Now Free Press reports on Facebookâs abysmal failure to act, continuing to put elections at risk.
What's going on here? This is #SurveillanceCapitalism, where corrupt information is more profitable than truth. Without new rights and laws to guarantee democratic principles in this digital century, our pleas for pro-social corporate behavior are hopeless. Welcome to democracy's abdication of our information and communication spaces to private ownership and #SurveillanceCapitalism where the emperors have all the clothes and we run naked. Paradoxically, no democracy can survive these conditions.
Please! Let's take the energy directed toward Elon and redirect it toward those we elected to govern. Link arms and insist on a democratic digital future where we are protected from unaccountable power wielded by billionaires, despots, corporations, or governments.â
â Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.
đŚWhat Iâm watching
đĽ: Muerte Es Vida: Death Is Life: FilmÂmakÂer Ali Alvarez explores the relaÂtionÂship between the jourÂney of the Monarch butÂterÂfly, the deaths of indiÂvidÂual peoÂple, and the Day of the Dead celebration.
âMuerte Es Vida is a documentary about the connection between death and nature. The filmâs central Mexican character, Sabino, believes the Monarch butterflies that arrive every year are the souls of departed family members coming back to visit as they arrive in time for Day of the Dead after an epic journey from Canada and the Northern United States.â
Taking Climate Action to Extremes - Now and Ahead. A conversation with Mark Alpert (Climate Parables Project), Gaia Vince (Nomad Century), and Igor Vamos (Yes Men Environmental Prankster Project). Hosted by Andy Revkin, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute Initiative on Communication and Sustainability.
The conversation is part of the âSustain Whatâ series: âa global conversation identifying solutions to the complicated, shape-shifting and epic challenges of humanityâs Anthropocene moment. A prime focus is making sense of, and getting the most out of, the planet's fast-forward information environment - the one Earth System changing faster than the actual environment.â
đ§Â What Iâm listening to
Structural changes, politics and policy with Leah Stokes. On the MCJ Collective podcast.
This was an interesting interview and perspective on the IRA, and Leah Stokes does a great job blending science, hope, anger, and excitement into her approach to communicating climate policy and her theory of social change. She also mentioned a couple of books relevant to political communication that caught my attention, so listing them here for future reference:
Follow the Leader? How Voters Respond to Politiciansâ Policies and Performance. By Gabriel S. Lenz.
The Faraway Nearby. By Rebecca Solnit.
How solar became cheap. By Greg Nemet.
đ Tools & Resources, and Events
Journalist Field Guide: Navigating Climate Misinformation. By Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD). Check out their 3-page tip sheet (pdf).
âThis guide was created as a resource for journalists and editors covering topics related to climate change to help better understand and respond to misinformation. It is focused on best practices, including psychology-based communications techniques and web-based tools. It features visual examples showing some key dos and donâts for journalists and editors to consider to avoid fanning the flames of misinformation and getting gamed by grifters.â
Book: Multispecies Futures: New Approaches to Teaching Human-Animal Studies. Edited by Andreas HĂźbner, Micha Gerri, Philipp Edlich, & Maria Moss.
Talk: The Future of Nature: A Conversation with Prof. Laura Martin & journalist Emma Marris (Thu, November 10th, 2022 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm EST). Sponsored by the Williams College Center for Environmental Studies:
đ° News and Events
Why a United States Supreme Court Case About Pig Farming Matters So Much. By Jeff Sebo in Verfassungsblog.
Informative twitter thread by Katharine Hayhoe on the new UN Environment Programmeâs âEmissions Gap Report 2022â:
đ Research
Kate Raworth (of Doughnut Economics fame) wrote this interesting thread on the research and ideas of ecological economist Herman Daly (1938 - 2022). Check out Raworthâs interesting discussion of how Daly influenced her work in this conversation from 2020 (starts at around 19:00 minute mark).
Coming December 2022: Fighting to Breathe Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore. By Nicole Fabricant, Professor of Anthropology at Towson University in Maryland. UC Press.
đĄ Ideas
The generous philosopher: Bruno Latour showed us how to think with the things of the world, respecting their right to exist and act on their own terms. By Stephen Muecke in Aeon.
The Free Agent Beaver: Environmentalists and journalists tend to describe beavers in the ways they benefit humans. Itâs time to change that perception of nature. By Adam Burnett and Debra Merskin in the Revelator.
Protecting Communities from Climate Change Is Astronomically Expensive: âNo mechanism exists to collect from the companies that ensured we would delay acting on climate for as long as possible. Thatâs why dozens of municipalities across the United States have filed climate liability lawsuits against fossil fuel companies.â By Karen Savage and Amy Westervelt in Drilled.
Who owns the earth? Private land ownership is a beautiful dream gone badly wrong. Itâs time to reinstate the forgotten ideal of the commons. By Antonia Malchik in Aeon.
All Tomorrowâs Fables: How Do We Write About This Vanishing World? Daegan Miller on The World As We Knew It and New Kinds of Nature Writing. By Daegan Miller in LitHub.
đď¸ From the archive
đżWild Ones #42: Environmental Communication Digest: Environmental Keyword: 'Wildness' + Rights of Nature Concept + Mapping the field of Climate Communication + Afro Surf: The Book + More!:
ââŚwe need a post-wilderness concept of wildness. A wild life is characterized by openness, possibility, a degree of choice, and self-determination, in which beings are understood to have their own familial, social, and ecological networks, their own lookouts, agendas, and needs.â
đŹÂ Quotes Iâm thinking about đŚ
âThe more people stared at their phones, the more money these companies made. Period. The people in Silicon Valley did not want to design gadgets and websites that would dissolve peopleâs attention spans. Theyâre not the Joker, trying to sow chaos and make us dumb. They spend a lot of their own time meditating and doing yoga. They often ban their own kids from using the sites and gadgets they design, and send them instead to tech-free Montessori schools. But their business model can only succeed if they take steps to dominate the attention spans of the wider society. Itâs not their goal, any more than ExxonMobil deliberately wants to melt the Arctic. But itâs an inescapable effect of their current business model.â
â Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention - and How to Think Deeply Again
âA humanistic environmental communication, fundamentally driven by a desire to provide solace in a time of difficulty, a hope to foster understanding and create meaning in a disrupted, disruptive environment, a wish to restore and sustain human welfare in the midst of rapid change, and a longing to support human emancipation and evolution in the Anthropocene toward our highest selves, such a discipline and practice is not just a crisis discipline, but a restorative one.â
â Susanne C. Moser, Whither the heart(-to-heart)? Prospects for a humanistic turn in environmental communication as the world changes darkly. In The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication.
Thanks so much as always for your interest in my work, and if you found this digest useful, please consider sharing with others who might find it interesting toođ I'd also love to hear from you. Leave a comment to let me know what you think about this digest, what areas of environmental communication youâre involved in/most interest you, or anything youâd like to see more of in Wild Ones:)