This paper contributes to theories of platform power and governance by expanding the lens to climate as a domain for standard-setting and corporate governance by digital platforms. The role of digital platform industries in climate governance speaks to the ways that digital platforms use their position as “critical intermediaries” to enhance their de facto regulatory power in the marketplace. I ask: how is the move into climate issues affecting the concentration of platform power, and what does the platformization of climate governance reveal about the cultural production of trust for digital platforms? I build on existing knowledge of the role that corporations have sought to play in climate governance as well as scholarship about societal trust in digital platform companies in order to examine the affects of platform capitalism as they are deployed to address the global climate future. This paper examines three case studies of digital platform climate governance: Amazon’s Climate Pledge projects, Google’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact, and the online payment processing platform Stripe’s carbon accountability initiative Frontier. All three initiatives focus on the platform’s own corporate climate accountability, as well as aim to govern those of other businesses, including clients, suppliers, and competitors. However, they also exhibit variability in their strategies and affective branding logics. In looking at emergent climate governance by platform companies, I examine two-related levels – the explicit standards and mechanisms of corporate climate accountability, and the implicit cultural production of trust and faith in the beneficence and power of platforms that undergirds that project.

In this paper, we explore the visual echo chamber effect in climate change communication. We leverage the ongoing monitoring activities of both progressive actors and counter actor groups involved in the online public debate surrounding climate communication. Our focus is on whether visual content possesses unique characteristics that enable it to bridge ideologically diverse communities.

We do note a small amount of shared visual content. Interestingly, when we examine the emotional reactions elicited by this shared visual content, we find that they often diverge significantly, suggesting that pre-existing ideological positions heavily influence interpretation. This work contributes to our detailed understanding of the social

dynamics that create and sustain the online echo-chamber effect observed

in climate change debates.

This study embarks on a comprehensive exploration of sociolinguistic dynamics within the polarized climate change discourse on Facebook, focusing on the communicational patterns across pro-climate action and anti-climate action groups. Our research objectives mainly focus on (1) understanding the variation in language codes between pro-climate action and anti-climate action groups and (2) inspecting how these linguistic nuances are perceived by the respective audiences. For this goal, we curated a comprehensive list of relevant English-speaking actors, and we collected their most recent Facebook posts relevant to the climate change discourse. After that, the data were analyzed through multiple quantitative language register markers and some engagement-related metrics.

Through the analysis of the data, we identified some distinct language patterns among different sides of the debate, such as the tendency of the pro-climate action groups to resort to more scientific terms in their communication. Furthermore, audience responses to variation in the language register showed significant divergences among the two groups, with the pro-climate audience showing heightened sensitivity to shifts in language register.

Our findings highlight the importance of tailoring communication strategies to promote productive discussions within the polarized climate change debate.

Popular social media platform, TikTok, has been on the rise since its creation in 2018, and in its early days, it was used for partaking in dance trends and lip-syncing videos. Since, TikTok has become a place for a range of content including educational science videos and videos for various activist causes. Of particular interest for this paper is the prevalence of climate change-related videos on the app. Users across the globe have taken to TikTok to educate others on the impacts of climate change, voice their concerns and grievances around a lack of climate action, and promote climate activism. But this paper asks: what role does TikTok play in the mediation of climate communication? This question addresses the expansion of digital industries into every facet of society, including political, economic, and social discussions linked to an impending climate catastrophe. To answer this question, this paper employs the notion of platformisation to conceptualise the role of apps in the political economy of climate (Burgess, 2021; Helmond, 2015). Using the app walkthrough method (Light et al., 2018), this paper contributes to understandings of the infrastructure and affordances of TikTok in the context of climate change. It considers how the functionality of TikTok impacts the user’s affective experience of the app to question the role of digital industries in shaping climate imaginaries.