Challenging Plastic Polluters: Public Shaming Campaigns on Plastic Pollution on Social Media Platforms

Abstract This chapter examines the Break Free from Plastic (BFFP) coalition’s ‘brand audit’ campaigns, which specifically focus on corporate accountability and public narratives around responsible handling of plastic waste. By analysing the use of social media platforms in a global environmental campaign, the chapter focuses on how activist groups channel social accountability efforts through the logic of platforms in the media ecosystem. The chapter draws on BFFP’s own documentation of the campaigns and instructions to activists as well as analysis of associated blog posts, strategy documents and social media toolkits. It examines how the coalition understands media strategy for the brand audit and corporate accountability campaigns in a complex media environment that enables the networked campaign while raising questions about the power relationship between social media platforms, businesses and activist groups in these efforts. This chapter asks how does the brand audit campaign produce pressure on companies through social media practices, and how do companies respond? I argue that the brand audit campaigns demonstrate an evolution in the strategy of pressuring businesses over complex environmental issues, part of a trend in activism that is itself indicative of how platforms inform the conditions for environmental activism and discussion.