“Our planet is our business”

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The Paradox of Campaigning for the Environment on Platforms Built for Profit.

A large, grey tractor with a plume of dark smoke is bulldozing a healthy green forest. A young man stands in the foreground with his back facing the forest, watching his phone and smiling. 'Like' icons and dollar bill signs rise from his phone to join the plume of smoke rising from the tractor. He is wearing a beige button up over a white shirt that reads "Nature Global Inc.". A businesswoman in a green button up shirt stands behind him with her hand on his back, smiling approvingly.
A man from ‘Nature Global Inc.’ smiles at notifications rising from his phone, while a businesswoman looks on encouragingly. They ignore the environmental destruction occurring behind them. Created by Evie Molloy.

Click this link to save a species! (and get a cuddly toy).

As I scroll through The World Wildlife Fund’s Instagram, I feel like I’m cuddled up on the couch watching a wildlife documentary produced by Disney. Seeing teeny tiny turtles wiggle into the waves on my screen doesn’t exactly resonate with my anxieties about impending ecological doom, but it does make me want more. And that’s the whole point… right?

A tiny black and grey baby sea turtle lifts it's front left flipper. Another baby turtle is in the background, falling forward. They are on a vast expanse of sand, crawling toward the sea.
Two baby sea turtles crawl across the sand. Photo by Evie Molloy.

Campaigning on social media

Social media platforms are a fundamental tool for NGOs to mobilise support, raise funds and facilitate conversations about social and environmental issues. They’re cheap, easy to use and enable access to huge, transnational audiences. 

But social media campaigns operate within the parameters of the platform, and the platform prioritises profit. When environmental NGOs campaign online, platform features push them to structure content in a way that contributes to sustaining the capitalist and consumer culture that fuels the very issues they aim to resolve. 

NGOization

Ngoization is a term used to highlight how activist movements come to act like corporations rather than disruptive forces for change. As NGOs rely on state and corporate donations, it’s common for their work to become depoliticised as they cater to the objectives of their donors. 

 Environmental NGOs often end up promoting individual actions, such as allyship and education rather than advocating for significant structural and political change.

“When frontline organizers spend more time writing grant reports than changing the system, something is wrong” – Arundhati Roy

Surveillance Capitalism

Personal data is the fertiliser that keeps digital platforms growing. Termed by Shoshana Zuboff as surveillance capitalism, platforms generate profit by gathering, analysing and selling personal data to predict behaviour. This data is sold to businesses and used to personalise feeds and target advertisements. It’s a lucrative industry – In 2024, Meta made $160 billion from advertising revenue.

After spending the past week scrutinising WWF’s online presence, I’m being bombarded with their ads to ‘adopt’ a wombat. Surveillance capitalism is in action, and consumerism is along for the ride.

A baby wombat wobbles across short grass. Instagram post: World Wildlife Fund Australia

For a tenth of their advertising revenue, Meta could adopt 88 million wombats. I’m not sure I want to think about the environmental impact of 88 million stuffed toy wombats.

To optimise the amount of data they can sell, platforms aim to maximise user engagement. 

Platform Features

The features such as the like button, comments, polls, and shop links that blossom across your user interface on social media are designed to attract interaction. The longer a user spends on a platform, and the more features they interact with the greater the quantity and quality of data the platform can collect and sell. It creates a cycle – Increased use increases personalisation for the user, and increased personalisation incentivises increased use.

The cycle of social media use, data collection, and personalisation.
The cycle of surveillance capitalism. Created by Evie Molloy.

For creators, platforms promote high levels of engagement as a measurable metric of success. But engagement isn’t achieved simply by the value of the content posted. 

Algorithmic Guidance

Algorithms are the roots that guide platform growth. All algorithms differ, but posts with high engagement are generally rewarded by increasing the creator’s visibility.  

For NGOs, this creates pressure to post content that will perform well within the platform’s algorithm rather than content that engages with substantial critiques of structural issues. 

Content that is attention grabbing, emotion evoking or participates in a trend is normally a safe bet.   

World Wildlife Fund

WWF Australia has 184 thousand followers on Instagram. Their posts are cleverly targeted to engage viewers. They call on me to swipe to see baby koalas (how can I say no?), comment to participate in a tree naming competition, repost videos of frogs and click the link in their bio to ‘join’ the community.  

A baby tiger runs across a road. Instagram post: World Wildlife Fund Australia.

A photo of a baby tiger has 21 thousand likes, and a video talking about how much land has been cleared in NSW has 214. The land clearing video is an anomaly – the vast majority of posts are fun quizzes, facts or just animals being cute. 

Drone shots pans an area of forest that has been logged, with original audio of heavy, clanking machinery. Instagram post: World Wildlife Fund Australia

What does it all mean?

When corporate interests stifle oxygen and algorithmic visibility crowds the soil, NGOs are left with little room to branch out.

WWF has significant credibility and voice but it’s not used to drive policy change. Instead, the online presence of WWF reframes environmental issues as a matter of individual participation, and worse, legitimises the action of commenting on an Instagram post as a valuable contribution to conservation. 

 It is critical for digital campaigners to recognise how platform affordances shape their campaigns, and to be aware of creating content that prioritises marketing over ethics. Rather than posting for likes, follows and profit, NGOs must use their online reach to demand accountability and critique the power structures complicit in the climate crisis. 

References/Further Reading

Choudry, A. & Kapoor, D. (2013). NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions & Prospects. Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/ngoization-9781780322575/

Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Allen & Unwin. https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Shoshana-Zuboff-Age-of-Surveillance-Capitalism-9781781256855

A large, grey tractor with a plume of dark smoke is bulldozing a healthy green forest. A young man stands in the foreground with his back facing the forest, watching his phone and smiling. 'Like' icons and dollar bill signs rise from his phone to join the plume of smoke rising from the tractor. He is wearing a beige button up over a white shirt that reads "Nature Global Inc.". A businesswoman in a green button up shirt stands behind him with her hand on his back, smiling approvingly.

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