The devastating impacts of the 2019-2020 “Black Summer” fires on Australian flora and fauna was seared into the public consciousness through the use of social media and hashtags, changing mainstream Australia’s relationship with nature and accelerating social movements for climate action.
Project summary
The human-centric view of nature in modern Australia has historically placed humans at the centre of natural disasters like bushfires. However, the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020 changed that. A camera in the pocket of every person and the ubiquitous use of social media and hashtags meant that, for the first time, nature and animals received equal billing in the visceral media feed of the event.
A new paper by researchers at the Climate, Society and Environment Research Centre, and the Institute for Sustainable Futures finds the impact on our relationship with nature has been profound. Social media cast a spotlight on the suffering of not only humans, but also nature and other species. Images of singed koalas clinging to life, or post-apocalyptic eucalypt forests, framed and collated through the power of hashtags, coalesced to show direct parallels with the suffering of humans and bring home the reality of climate change in new ways.
The researcher’s thematic analysis of online data over five-months found the use of hashtags can cultivate new connections. Connections between nature and humans, which can foster human empathy and care for the nonhuman. They can also support articulations of multispecies justice, and public understanding of extreme bushfire events in the broader context of political debates about climate action.
Try these hash tags;
#AustraliaOnFire #AustralianFires #KoalasNotCoal
Project timeframe
2022
SDG targets addressed by this project
Life on land:
15.5 – Take urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species.
15.9 - By 2020, integrate ecosystem and biodiversity values into national and local planning, development processes, poverty reduction strategies and accounts.
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Research Assistant, School of Communication -
Adjunct Fellow, Institute for Sustainable Futures
