Young people are worried about climate change. This anxiety is a rational response to the threats and realities of the current climate crisis, a crisis which young people have inherited and have little power to avert (Pihkala, 2021). If “all education is an introduction in some way to the future” (França, 2019, n.p.), it is surely an institutional failure that so few educational jurisdictions include more than cursory nods to climate change in their primary and secondary curricula (McKenzie, 2021). Despite this lag in policy, however, students are learning about and responding to climate change (Gasparri et al., 2021). In particular, young people’s concern about climate change is clearly visible on the social media platform TikTok (Basch et al., 2022). This youth-focused project is interested in youth experiences and intentions regarding TikTok as a form of critical public pedagogy on climate change. As such, this project asks: What can we learn, as educators, policy makers, and fellow humans, about and from the youth-led, climate-change-focused communication happening on TikTok? 

TikTok is a relatively new platform on which users produce and share short video content. Once posted, users—predominantly young people—interact with this content by creating new, often mimetic responses, which interact with TikTok’s algorithm and result in a form of “platform politics,” i.e., “the assemblage of design, policies, and norms,” (Massanari, 2017, p. 336) that continuously influence discourse on the platform. Public pedagogy refers to the teaching and learning that happens in public, outside of formal educational institutions (O’Malley et al., 2020). However, TikTok disrupts the “false binary between public-private places of learning” (Truman, 2021, p. 66) by algorithmically feeding users public-personal-corporate-political curricula (and prompting users to generate their own), available wherever data signals can reach, be it in the classroom or kitchen. TikTok is a place where youth express their feelings of grief, anger, and urgency about climate change and also a place to find hope and solidarity, as well as engage in forms of climate activism (de Moor et al., 2021). McKenzie (2022) observes that while TikTok’s algorithmic controls function as “digital governance over the affective lives of people across the globe” (p. 155) at the same time, such virtual encounters “can also be seen as contributing to forms of collective affect and action that, in some cases, extend beyond the algorithmic ambitions of such platforms.” (p. 155). Because of TikTok’s distinctive platform politics and young user base, researchers (e.g., Hautea et al., 2021) have begun to study TikTok and its content as representative of and instrumental in the (re)production of what Papacharissi (2015) calls “affective publics,” i.e., “networked publics that are mobilized and connected, identified, and potentially disconnected through expressions of sentiment, including in relation to climate change” (p. 311). This presentation will review the existing literature on TikTok and other social media platforms as sites of intended climate communication and education, proposing further questions as to the influence this communication might have as public pedagogy towards liveable climate futures.

Pearce et al. (2019) points to a need for future research that includes single-platform studies and multimodal analysis of climate change publics to investigate whether social media “provide space for subjective and normative imaginations of climate alongside the universal, apolitical climate imaginary proffered by science” (p. 9). Hautea et al. (2021) further suggest that future studies “tease out creators’ motivations through methods such as ethnography, interviewing, and focus groups; and explore audience effects through experimental and survey research” (p. 12). This literature review presentation will set the stage for such projects. The methodology for the literature review is that of a scoping review (Peters et al., 2015), which will provide a broad overview of key literatures and map key concepts pertinent to consideration of TikTok as a location of intended climate pedagogy. It is expected that literature drawn internationally, and will focus on areas of digital media, climate communication, and education. The review will go beyond climate education as science education, looking at how public pedagogy on social media addresses the psychological, ideological, and political barriers to climate action, and what pedagogical avenues for climate education may be viable options in the future.

This presentation will provide an overview of key findings to date, areas of less research, and questions of interest for subsequent studies of TikTok as a space for public pedagogy toward livable climate futures. The analysis of the literature will map out the sticking points and viable pathways present within the complexity of both academic and non-academic discourse. The aim of the scoping review is not to provide a conclusive evaluation of the literature, but to represent the range of evidence and discussion, currently and cumulatively, being held related to youth, social media, and climate change in order to guide future research projects toward successful climate communication and liveable climate futures.

Basch, C.H., Yalamanchili, B., & Fera, J. (2022). #Climate change on TikTok: A content analysis of videos. Journal of Community Health, 47, 163–167. de Moor, J., De Vydt, M., Uba, K., & Wahlström, M. (2021). New kids on the block: Taking stock of the recent cycle of climate activism. Social Movement Studies, 20(5), 619–625. França, J. (2019, July 2). Henry Giroux: “Those arguing that education should be neutral are really arguing for a version of education in which nobody is accountable.” CCCBLAB. https://lab.cccb.org/en/henry-giroux-those-arguing-that-education-should-be-neutral-are-really-arguing-for-a-version-of-education-in-which-nobody-is-accountable/ Gasparri, G., Omrani, O. E., Hinton, R., Imbago, D., Lakhani, H., Mohan, A., Yeung, W., & Bustreo, F. (2021). Children, adolescents, and youth pioneering a human rights-based approach to climate change. Health and Human Rights Journal, 23(2), 95-108. https://www.hhrjournal.org/2021/12/children-adolescents-and-youth-pioneering-a-human-rights-based-approach-to-climate-change/ Hautea, S., Parks, P., Takahashi, B., & Zeng, J. (2021). Showing they care (or don’t): Affective publics and ambivalent climate activism on TikTok. Social Media + Society, 1014. Massanari, A. (2017). #Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures. New Media & Society, 19(3), 329–346. McKenzie, M. (2021). Climate change education and communication in global review: Tracking progress through national submissions to the UNFCCC Secretariat. Environmental Education Research, 27(5), 631-651. O’Malley, M. P., Sandlin, J. A., Burdick, J., O’Malley, M. P., Sandlin, J. A., & Burdick, J. (2020). Public pedagogy theories, methodologies, and ethics. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education (August). Oxford University. Papacharissi, Z. (2015). Affective publics: Sentiment, technology, and politics. Oxford University Press. 23Pearce, W., Niederer, S., Özkula, S. M., & Sánchez Querubín, N. (2019). The social media life of climate change: Platforms, publics, and future imaginaries. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 10(2), e569. Peters, M. D., Godfrey, C. M., Khalil, H., McInerney, P., Parker, D., Soares, C.B. (2015). Guidance for conducting systematic scoping reviews. International Journal of Evidence Based Healthcare. 13(3), 141-6. Pihkala, P. (2020). Anxiety and the ecological crisis: An analysis of eco-anxiety and climate anxiety. Sustainability 2020, 12, 7836. Truman, S. E. (2022). Feminist speculations and the practice of research-creation: Writing pedagogies and intertextual affects. Routledge.