# How Do US Congress Members Advertise Climate Change: An Analysis Of Ads Run On Meta's Platforms

**Authors:** Laurenz Aisenpreis, Gustav Gyrst, Vedran Sekara  
**arXiv:** [2304.03278](https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03278)  
**Date:** 2023-04-06  
**Summary page:** https://www.summarizepaper.com/en/paper/2304.03278v1/

## Key points

- Transparency and integrity in communication about climate change is crucial in today's political landscape
- A recent study analyzed political advertisements related to climate change issued by US Congress members since mid-2018 using Meta's Ad Library
- Out of the 602,546 ads collected, only 3.2% were climate-related
- Democrats focused substantially more on climate change than Republicans did, with 99.7% of all climate-related ads stemming from Democratic politicians
- There was a significant difference in the average amount of impressions generated per dollar spent between the two parties, with Republicans generating on average 188% more impressions with their climate ads for the same money spent as Democrats did
- The study also found that differences in impressions were not caused by how politicians talked about climate change
- This study highlights differences in advertising characteristics between the two political parties when it comes to communicating about climate change on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram
- It provides insights into which politicians are driving discussions around this topic and how their messaging differs over time

## Summary

In today's political landscape, ensuring transparency and integrity in communication about climate change is more important than ever. To shed light on this issue, a recent study analyzed political advertisements related to climate change issued by US Congress members since mid-2018 using Meta's Ad Library. Out of the 602,546 ads collected, only 19,176 (3.2%) were climate-related. The study found that Democrats focused substantially more on climate change than Republicans did, with 99.7% of all climate-related ads stemming from Democratic politicians. This was driven by a small core of Democratic politicians where 72% of all impressions could be attributed to just ten individuals. Interestingly, there was a significant difference in the average amount of impressions generated per dollar spent between the two parties. Republicans generated on average 188% more impressions with their climate ads for the same money spent as Democrats did. While demographic factors partially explained the variance in ad performance between the two parties, they did not fully account for it. The study also analyzed the sentiment of ads related to climate change using VADER library and found that differences in impressions were not caused by how politicians talked about climate change. Overall, this study highlights differences in advertising characteristics between the two political parties when it comes to communicating about climate change on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. It provides insights into which politicians are driving discussions around this topic and how their messaging differs over time. The findings can serve as a starting point for further research into political advertising related to climate change on Meta's platforms.