Weekly Roundup 6/15
Mon, June 15, 2015
Politico: FRACKING GETS THE BUZZFEED TREATMENT
North Texans for Natural Gas, a group backed by the gas industry, is launching a new pro-fracking website today that takes a page from BuzzFeed’s playbook. The website, which is called FrackFeed, features quizzes and listicles about fracking. “Facebook is the number one source of news for millennials, and people are increasingly digesting the news through digital media — especially short, pithy pieces of content. Simply put, FrackFeed allows us to explain the benefits of fracking to a new generation of Americans,” the group’s spokesman, Steve Everley, told ME.
Columbus Business First: Fracking group hopes memes, BuzzFeed-like website can help industry
A new website backed by the oil and gas industry hopes its Buzzfeed-y Hollywood-inspired memes can help sway anti-fracking attitudes.
FrackFeed.com uses listicles and a meme gallery to attack those opposed to oil and gas drilling. There's pictures with short lines of pithy text featuring cartoon and movie characters, environmentalists, President Barack Obama – even the anti-fracking celebrity chef Mario Batali, which the meme admonishes for wearing Ugg shoes, which are made in part by natural gas components.
Houston Chronicle: Oil industry seeks to fracture foes' edge in debate
In the war of public opinion about hydraulic fracturing, supporters are firing back with their own celebrity backer: Ron Burgundy.
"You have fracking questions? I have fracking answers!" the mustachioed character from the "Anchorman" movies says in a meme created on a website launched this week in defense of the technology, which involves blasting chemicals and water underground to crack open dense rock formations and unleash tiny droplets of oil and gas.
The site, called FrackFeed.com, is an attempt by supporters to wrest control of the debate over the well completion process, framing their view of hydraulic fracturing in a fresh way in an effort to reclaim some of the ground lost to opponents who have been outpacing them on social media.
