The Facebook Algorithm's Active Role in Climate Advertisement Delivery

Abstract

Communication strongly influences attitudes on climate change. Within sponsored communication, high spend and high reach advertising dominates. In the advertising ecosystem we can distinguish actors with adversarial stances: organizations with contrarian or advocacy communication goals, who direct the advertisement delivery algorithm to launch ads in different destinations by specifying targets and campaign objectives. We present an observational (N=275,632) and a controlled (N=650) study which collectively indicate that the advertising delivery algorithm could itself be an actor, asserting statistically significant influence over advertisement destinations, characterized by U.S. state, gender type, or age range. This algorithmic behaviour may not entirely be understood by the advertising platform (and its creators). These findings have implications for climate communications and misinformation research, revealing that targeting intentions are not always fulfilled as requested and that delivery itself could be manipulated.