We are pleased to share our new article, “Role model narratives are underutilized in Instagram and TikTok climate action posts,” in Oxford Open Climate Change.
Past research has found that role model narratives, or personal stories about people taking part in desired behaviors, are a promising strategy for encouraging behavior change—including for promoting climate advocacy. However, little is known about the extent to which role model narratives are currently used in climate action outreach.
In this study, we collected 645 social media posts under the hashtags #climateaction and #climateadvocacy dated between August 2021 and October 2024. We then analyzed how many of the posts included climate action role model narratives — that is, stories about people taking part in climate actions.
Key findings:
- Climate action role model narratives appeared in 11% of the Instagram posts we analyzed and 19% of the TikTok posts.
- The most common climate actions modeled in the narratives included protest (46%), advocacy (18%), outreach (17%), and other forms of collective action (17%).
- Only 28% of the role model narratives included a call to action — most commonly, a call to join an organization.
- Role model narratives did not generate significantly different engagement (likes per account followers) than other posts in the sample. However, they were represented among the ten top-performing posts.
These results suggest that role model narratives, a potentially powerful tool for encouraging climate action, are underused on social media. Furthermore, climate action role model narratives could potentially be made even more impactful by making sure to include calls to action.
On behalf of the research team: Julia Fine, Joshua Ettinger, Sri Saahitya Uppalapati, John Kotcher, and Edward Maibach.