How Video Activism Can Improve Local Climate Activist Groups' Aging Demographics

I am the first video activist for my choice advocacy organization, Boston Climate Action Network (BCAN). It is crazy that I would originate a new role as an intern with no activism experience, for an organization that has been around since I was born. Nevertheless, what is crazier is that role is utilizing not new technology but instead forms that have been developing since before the admissions of Utah as a state.

Communication through moving images has been a tool for organizations for hundreds of years, whether the utilization of Hollywood as a propaganda machine during World War 2 or the utilization of Tom Cruise and the Top Gun franchise in military recruitment. If it is such a powerful tool, how come climate activist organizations still need to incorporate moving images into their effort?

Organizations are constrained by limited resources to fulfill their objectives, whether financial, competency, or time-based; forcing organizations to choose how to spend their reserves. These limitations inform the practices of parties. How should climate activist organizations spend their limited resources? Should they continue what they have widely focused on in the past, grassroots in-person protests and outreach which have been effective at building a community? Or is there space to produce mass media video and social media content which can build a more robust narrative reaching both younger and more non-white audiences, who do not possess the class resource pre-requisite to activation through traditional mechanisms and empower them to contribute through video activism? Or does this simply encourage slacktivism and waste precious resources?

Boston Climate Action Network has a demographic crisis. Attending any general meeting, you will seldom find a spring chicken. Although there are various reasons for this demographic contraction, a contributing factor is the lack of engagement in youth spaces.

BCAN is not properly engaging in spaces where people under fifty are. It is no longer sufficient to have your movement covered by the local paper. Nationally only between 9-10% of people under 65 are reading a newspaper daily, versus more than double, (21%) of people over 65 are reading newspapers daily. Similar statistics appear with cable news networks, and network news. It is social media, GenZers and Millennials have turned for their news, 50% and 44% respectively accessing news daily through social media. Generation Z is engaging online more than any group before it.

Forbes contributor Jessica Baron sums up the generational divide,

“If you’re anything like me, you’ll do just about anything to avoid watching a video and skip to the text instead. Then again, if you’re anything like me, you’re clearly not part of the Gen Z crowd making video content more popular than ever.”

Young people, in some cases, are almost exclusively consuming video content. I’ll even admit as a Zoomer that I can doom scroll through five hours of my day with French political analysis and cat videos, unless you’re my writing professor asking why my paper was late again (I’ve had five dead grandmas by now). Nevertheless, it’s not just me, thank god, that would be embarrassing, 44% of people aged 18-to-24 and watching 3+ hours of video content every day.

The meteoric rise of TikTok, boasting over 150 million active American users, is a testament to the amount of demand for information disseminated through video; with established social media platforms imitating the short-form content through Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, it is self-evident that video isn’t going anywhere. But how are climate organizations marketing themselves?

Sadly, their primary method reflects the broader demographic issue of the organization. They follow the tried-and-true method of attending events and recruiting through fliers. A fantastic method of organizing, but the reach is minimized to those already activated and with time to attend a city council meeting, inherently not a young demographic.

Activist groups must shift to video content production to populate social media sites with engaging content. With the rise of decent production quality with amateur, already acquired tools, there are few monetary restrictions with a sizeable potential payout. Organizations like BCAN cannot recruit young and middle-aged citizens because BCAN does not operate in the same spaces as these demographics; this has severely limited growth potential and its ability to fulfill goals. These organizations should dedicate more resources to video content.

Although video production has little monetary cost, creating good video content has a significantly more costly talent prerequisite. A large production team is unnecessary; a single individual with the necessary skills and time can do what is required for these organizations to fulfill their production needs.

BCAN isn’t completely limited to Gutenberg’s press. They have had a website registered since 2008, Facebook posting since 2009, Twitter since 2018, and most recently, an Instagram account since 2021; those dates do reflect a gap between a platform’s popularity and BCAN adoption, but the issue is that what they post are not engaging to young people. Although they changed the medium of distribution for a modern era, the format is largely indistinguishable from the flyer or zine of my parents’ activism. These are text heavy posts that do not leverage the strengths of the platform for which they are posting.

National Tracking Poll #2202053. 2022. Morning Consult

Not all is lost, however. Since I’ve started volunteering for BCAN, there has been a shift toward video content, not just with my work but also those running social media. The most liked recent post on the BCAN Instagram is a video of a BCAN member, Mike Ritter, testifying in a Boston city council meeting on December 13, 2022, with 45 likes compared to the next post of an Action Alert slide with only 24 likes. This example shows a clear difference of engagement between message mediums. The Instagram audience is seeking content that is engaging, like the Mike Ritter video.

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BCAN, if it wants time in these youth spaces, must adapt to what these spaces respond to and create more video content.

These two posts show that regardless of demographic, people are more engaged with video content, and there is a reason why people get so much more information through a video, not necessarily in facts or arguments, but with emotions or visual cues. You can hear the emotion in Ritter’s voice and his connotation when describing mold in classrooms. However, a video can become even more intricate when implementing screen language, utilizing fonts, color, lighting, framing, screen direction, and a world of communication outside of the written word.

Our communication as activist organizations require us to go past stating a problem and providing solutions to inspire our community to get out and fulfill their duty. It is only enough to provide means with motivation.

Films have long played a role in developing movements from the fringe to the mainstream, changing perceptions of groups (every so often) for the better. Sirena Bergman points to popular documentaries like David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II as a turning point in broader climate perceptions,

“The response was immediate and ubiquitous. As the final episode aired on the first day of 2018, social media was ablaze with viewers outraged by what they’d seen, and discussion around the impact our environmental choices are having on our natural resources became commonplace. The vastly increased awareness of plastic pollution has been dubbed the ‘Blue Planet effect’.”

While this series was undoubtedly a very influential piece, it is not just large-budget BBC documentaries driving rising climate concerns.

Climate activists present themselves and the issues from firsthand accounts, giving legitimacy to the ideas and their work through posts on social media, best realized through audio-visual content. It is not enough to go out and protest and speak out at city council meetings without bringing that work to a digital audience. The ‘Blue Planet effect” doesn’t have to start in London or Hollywood, it can be brought by activists on a small scale to their local communities through their outreach. Posting your activism to social media isn’t about receiving social clout or building an image, but to encourage others to join, engage in the conversation, and fight for ideals.

Screenshot of Mike Ritter Instagram Post

depicting Dr. Nathan J. Robison removing a plastic straw from the nostril of a sea turtle. This graphic video posted by Christine Figgener under the account Sea Turtle Biologist has amassed over 100 million views, with another post by The Leatherback Trust reaching over 86 million

Firsthand video accounts have been the genesis of climate legislation and movements within the climate activism space. Researcher Dr. Christine Figgener posted in August 2015 a video titled Sea Turtle with Straw up its Nostril - "NO" TO SINGLE-USE PLASTIC to YouTube

views. The outcome of this videos popularity as a cause celebre has been the state of California requiring patrons to ask for straws in restaurants since 2019, as well as the city of Seattle since 2018, and many local and national chains improving their own policies, including Boston University serving drinks at it’s dining halls with paper compostable straws.

This viral video from researchers wasn’t the start of the anti-straw movement. USA Today in 2018 published a piece discussing the teenager Milo Cress who advocated for the same action as the legislation passed in California and Seattle achieved, for restaurants to ask before giving a single use plastic straw to patrons. While he did have success discussing with local businesses and a local recycling nonprofit, his greatest achievement in government was in 2013 when Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper declared a straw free day.

Without a piece of media that created an emotional connection, grounding larger existential threats to climate, Cress was restricted in his movement to a symbolic holiday. Whereas by utilizing video, researchers Figgener and Robinson were able to inspire legislation in the largest state in the union.

Most organizations know this and the power of media attention. Climate Group Third Act recently made national headlines for their protest encouraging banks to divest from fossil fuels. Campaign strategist Deborah Moore was kind enough to share documentation Third Act prepared before the protest.

These included a media statement,

a template media statement for local groups to disseminate to local media, talking points, a toolkit for social media posts, instructions for writing to editors, and a central repository for photos of activism. These efforts to were highly effective in garnering media attention.

Vanessa Arcara, President and Co-Founder of Third Act boasts,

“Coverage included the The New York Times, The Guardian – twice, NPR, The Washington Post , The Independent, Democracy Now, Reuters, and more than 50 other newspaper articles, radio stories, TV news stories and podcasts,” including Boston’s local WBUR.

This focus on traditional media reflects the organizations demographics as a group of retired activists but Third Act doesn’t restrict their information dissemination with news outlets but takes control with their use of social media and production of video content. They demonstrate what activists can do with cell phone footage to document their activism and disseminate that footage through various means.

Some organizations take this to another level. The international climate group 350, started by youth activists in America, takes a different approach to their communication strategy. Their team is made up of a diverse group of activists from around the world, overcoming age boundaries. This group utilizes video throughout their communication, whether that be on their website, where the second module on the home page is a call to action video, or the entire section of videos on their website, or the frequent posting of videos on their social media that highlight climate issues, or document activist events. This group takes a very different approach to their media, which speaks to young people.

Looking at the Massachusetts chapter of 350, the story changes slightly. Their photos of events show activists again skewed to a higher age bracket. This is counter to what you would expect from an organization organizing out of one of the youngest cities in America. Boston (city) is 67% 18-64, compared to the national average of 55.3%. So why is an organization, that on the international level, is diverse in age demographics, degrade into what we see in the other Boston centered climate organization, the clue again appears in their communications. The Massachusetts node doesn’t take the playbook of the international organization but a strategy similar to BCAN. These organizations need to push back on the infographic social media posts and do what these influential climate groups do by posting video content. BCAN can’t be on these platforms without utilizing what makes social media successful, visual storytelling.

Online platforms don’t have captive audiences, your content is competing with all the best cat videos and thirst traps humanity has to offer. It is impossible to believe what is essentially a digital flyer will out compete cats playing the piano. For social media to enhance activist efforts it needs to be seen, it needs to give a reason to be seen.

These videos don’t have to be elaborate documentaries or well-developed Hollywood blockbusters. My activism shows that a successful video could be as simple as posting your members speaking at city hall. Documenting activism can be enough to engage viewers.

Or it could be slightly more elaborate, footage showing the state public schools are in.

Video activism is attainable for anyone who can figure out how to press record on a cell phone and post it to.

While video content can help engage young activists, some commentators argue that by using social media, an organization is encouraging slacktivism. Right-wing Canadian writer and entrepreneur Scott Gilmore criticizes social media use,

“We raised awareness. We empathized. We trended. We re-tweeted the hell out of that hashtag. Now, six months later, the schoolgirls we improbably expected to rescue through social media are sold into slavery or married off to the men who stole them.”

He believes that interactions through social media only dampen “real activist” efforts and instead becomes a show of one’s self-righteousness, fulfilling their need for real change.

Looking at youth poll data from Harvard this myth of slacktivism, can be disproven. Harvard’s poll asked respondents 18- to 29-years old what sources they used to receive news, including several social media sites where one could interact with posts. There was little deviation between social media sites and likely voter status, instead the largest discrepancy was with those who did not access any media source for news.

Respondents answering none of the above were 6% more likely to be categorized as unlikely voter.

Regardless of social media use, adjusted for age, and demographics, youth polled were just as likely to exercise their franchise, the only difference being if they never accessed any of the news information in the poll. Video activism for climate activist groups isn’t necessarily about fulfilling activist goals but meeting people where they are and allowing them to climb the organizational ladder and commit what they can to a cause.

The use of online media can be dangerous. Sagit Bar-Grill and Shachar Reichman, two researchers out of Israel, studied the roll out of a website reimbursement for a luxury car brand and its effect on brick-and-mortar sales.

They found a “negative effect of increased online engagement on offline sales, and propose that the mechanism leading to this effect is substitution between online and offline engagement in contexts in which offline interaction and engagement must precede a car purchase.”

While their online engagement increased with the funding of their website, this had an inverse relationship on sales, because this became a substitute for many customers, who were already less convinced of purchasing their vehicles. Groups must be careful in how they engage online, not to allow their engagement to substitute in-person participation. However, this does not mean activist organizations should forego a strong online presence, but instead develop clear paths towards activity within the organization. Bar-Grill and Reichman suggest ways of moving customers down the sales funnel, but this can be applied to activist organizations. Instead of contacting people through a sales rep, a climate organization can have a call to action, to get engaged and attend a meeting, or protest.

There has been a long history of youth activism long before the use of social media. Senator Gaylord Nelson describes spreading the word of his new day of protest, Earth Day in 1970,

“The wire services carried the story about the planned Earth Day demonstration from coast to coast. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum for expressing their concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air –and they did so with tremendous exuberance.”

The environmental movement was born outside of video content, effectively garnered youth support, and passed legislation. This was possible because the environmental crisis was easily tangible; these activists did not need a video of sea turtles with straws in their nostrils or documentaries of environmental destruction; they could see the smog in New York and LA, the polluted rivers, the oil washing up on shore off Santa Barbara. The environmental threat of today has shifted to global changes, not in weather but climate; plastic waste builds up far off in the oceans, and de-forestation, it has become the responsibility of climate groups to show the existential threat of climate change tangibly and do so in an engaging way.

Local climate groups are stuck in communication strategies from 30 years ago. To survive with the youth of today organizations must shift to communicate with residents not at residents.

If climate organizations want to employ activists outside their current demographics, they need to engage meaningfully outside of the statehouse and meet residents where they are. BCAN is missing representation of most of Boston’s population while advocating for those groups. If the group wants to internalize the city it represents, it must reach the population through audio-visual media.

Paula Moura March 21, 2023 WBUR

350.org

B-Roll Footage I shot for BCAN

March 3rd 2023 Speech by BCAN director Hessann Farooqi