Climate Change is Fake?
For the meme assignment I decided to choose the topic of climate change to promote misinformation. Initially, I was planning to do a meme about COVID-19 misinformation, but those topics were taken. Therefore, I thought climate change would make for fun meme ideas. I ended up making three since I kept coming up with ideas.
Where did the idea come from?
The first two memes came from meme video templates that have been recently circulating on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. Therefore, I thought using them would be a good way to promote my misinformation. The last meme template comes from the idea of sh**posting, where people create bad memes since those can be funny to reshare. As for the idea behind the misinformation being promoted, which is that climate change does not exist, I got the information from what I see circulating online through news sites and social media posts. People opposing the existence of climate change usually claim that the existence of winters or snow storms disprove the world heating up. This is why I chose to focus on the fact that whenever it snows or winter hits and brings down the temperature, climate change deniers feel as though they have a “got you” moment.
How were the memes created?
I initially tried to create the first meme, the template from The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent movie, using Instagram Reels, the Instagram equivalent to TikTok. However, I was having issues with changing the text throughout the clip, so I ended up using the video editing website Capcut to create the video memes. I got both template clips from YouTube. For the last meme, I used Canva to create it.
Works Cited
Mobile Snapshot. Low Resolution and Panorama Shots. 2015. https://www.govisible.ca/galleries/g-655f02388cd9b5ad536278a1fcfb5bb603.
Turrentine, Jeff. Climate Misinformation on Social Media Is Undermining Climate Action. NRDC, April 19, 2022. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/climate-misinformation-social-media-undermining-climate-action.
