Fifty Shades of Greenwashing: The Political Economy of Climate Change Advertising on Social Media

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new measurement method for climate change greenwashing on social media, revealing its actors, tactics, and targeted communities, especially highlighting fossil fuel industry involvement and political greenwashing.

Contribution

It develops a novel measurement technique combining language models, human coding, and Bayesian analysis to identify greenwashing in social media ads, and uncovers industry links and targeted micro-campaigns.

Findings

Fossil fuel companies and related groups are major promoters of greenwashing.

Greenwashing ads are micro-targeted at left-leaning communities with fossil assets.

Limited evidence of greenwashing aimed at national public opinion.

Abstract

In this paper, we provide a novel measure for greenwashing -- i.e., climate-related misinformation -- that shows how polluting companies can use social media advertising related to climate change to redirect criticism. To do so, we identify greenwashing content in 11 million social-political ads in Meta's Ad Targeting Datset with a measurement technique that combines large language models, human coders, and advances in Bayesian item response theory. We show that what is called greenwashing has diverse actors and components, but we also identify a very pernicious form, which we call political greenwashing, that appears to be promoted by fossil fuel companies and related interest groups. Based on ad targeting data, we show that much of this advertising happens via organizations with undisclosed links to the fossil fuel industry. Furthermore, we show that greenwashing ad content is being micro-targeted at left-leaning communities with fossil fuel assets, though we also find comparatively little evidence of ad targeting aimed at influencing public opinion at the national level.