From Fake News to Echo-Chambers: On The Limitations of New Media for Environmental Activism in Australia, and “Activist-Responsive Adaptation”

Abstract

ABSTRACT For environmental activism, new media are now essential campaign tools to better protect the environment and enhance sustainability. The literature, however, poses some limitations for such purpose. Prominently, increasing concentration of new media ownership, and government digital surveillance; also ones of communication. Given little attention to new media limitations for Australian environmental activism or internationally, our focus was to better understand how Australian activists perceived and responded to these limitations on the effectiveness of their activism. Analysis involved interviews with activists regarding Australia-wide fracking and old-growth forest logging campaigns. Activists brushed aside surveillance due to the democratic legitimacy of their activities, also media concentration as an issue beyond them to address with any immediacy. Instead, they focussed on immediate practical issues around communication effectiveness, including new media information overload, fake news, digital echo-chambers, and trolls. In response to these issues, we identified an “activist-responsive adaptation” strategic approach that sought to both limit such intrusions and adapt communication to more effectively engage with audiences. More broadly, to address these issues and the bigger ones of surveillance and media concentration, socially responsible regulation of new media technology and communication was suggested.