The fossil fuel industry has a long history of using all available media to defend its legitimacy. This has often been in direct response to campaigns for regulation and the reduction of environmental impacts, or as a crisis management strategy during oil spills and similar disasters. Exxon has been the most notorious company due to the extent and depth of its PR systems, and it is now well known that this influence was used in the 1970s and 80s to sow uncertainty about the causes of global warming. Long before this, Exxon had established multiple networks of cultural co-optation across its global operations by sponsoring arts and literature. In Colombia this was done through the Lámpara magazine, funding of modern art exhibitions, literary prizes and even film preservation.
It is thus unsurprising to find that large mining companies, such as Glencore, current owner of Carbones del Cerrejón, are still investing in creating a positive image for extractive industries, and that they use the media with the greatest reach to do so. Nowadays, presence on social media is crucial to public relations, and it requires faster response times to media debates and crises. Platforms such as YouTube and TikTok allow communities affected by mining, as well as environmental, human rights, and labour organisations to denounce violations and launch public campaigns against corporations. This creates scenarios for discursive confrontation.
On 14th July 2021, Cerrejón Colombia’s official YouTube channel posted the first video in a series tagged as #LaYouTuberMinera (“The [female] Miner YouTuber”). The Miner YouTuber introduces herself as Joyce Romero, a young woman wearing the corporate yellow polo shirt and hard-hat. She is an effective communicator, using friendly, persuasive language on fast-paced videos adorned with sound effects and graphics. Over the following few months, the channel published 19 videos in this series, ending in October 2022. They covered topics such as the company’s efforts to control Covid-19, the presence of women in several roles, and the wellbeing services available to mine workers. The main topic, however, is the explicit defence of the company’s environmental policies.
The first video posted by the YouTuber is titled “The Bruno is very alive”, and it is a response to the accusations from communities and other observers about the disastrous consequences of the deviation of the Bruno stream, which was carried out in order to expand the opencast mine. In particular, the video seems to be a response to content published by the channel La Guajira le Habla al País, a campaign led by the Colombian filial of the international NGO Friends of the Earth. For instance, in September 2019 this channel posted a 10-minute video titled “Destruction of the Bruno stream, a crime against nature”, which records a walk through the dried-out bed of the stream, and gathers testimonies from local community leaders about the impact this has had.
In May 2022, the YouTuber returns to the Bruno stream to present a list of 10 points that would show the success of the stream’s re-routing, which had been carried out five years earlier and in disregard of a High Court decision. These arguments are presented in a somewhat more combative style, referring to the resurgence of online debates and urging people to listen to the facts. Thus, the video appeals to technical and scientific forms of knowledge, such as ecological surveys, measurements and expert visits to the stream and its surroundings. This kind of content (photos, graphs, and videos showing visits by environmental professionals and university students) is widespread on the company’s social media. Overall, they construct the river as an object defined by its physical characteristics, rather than its relationships. In fact, one of the ten points argued in the video is that “there were no communities” in the area of re-routing. This glaring contradiction with the videos by other organisations reflects what Arturo Escobar calls an ontological conflict: The stream is not the same thing, it isn’t defined in the same way (including the boundaries of the affected area) by the different parts in the dispute.
The Miner YouTuber collection is interesting because it displays a range of discourses for the legitimation of extractivism. There are videos highlighting fiscal contributions and aid to the region and local communities; others foreground the myriad applications and uses of mined products; others focus on job creation, particularly on the opportunities offered to women and to Indigenous people. Many of these strategies were already present in 1980s media around the set-up of the mine. In this initial rhetoric, there is a promise of containment: the mine’s impacts are acknowledged, but they can be limited in space and time. As the mining operation has perpetuated itself, and its scale has continued to grow, these containment arguments have given way to a rhetoric of restoration. On the Miner YouTuber videos, the mining company appears as a great force for the transformation of the land, applying scientific approaches to re-create ecosystems after it has destroyed them. This emphasis on the possibility of restoration is consistent with the techno-optimist logic of the fossil fuel industry, which intends to continue on its course while also buying carbon offsets, or planting forests, or doing geoengineering. This chipper tone is very suitable for social media platforms.
In September 2022, we first hear from Rosa Daza, “La Tiktoker Cerrejonera” (The TikToker from Cerrejon). Her content is very similar to Joyce Romero’s, emphasising the benefits of mining, offering glimpses into the behind-the-scenes operations, and touching lightly on gender and ethnic diversity. From the first video, Daza establishes her identity as a local woman and part of the workforce, and affirms her trust on the idea of “responsible mining” or “mining done well”. Addressing the viewer directly, Daza invites them to “chat together”. The video has received over 120 comments, most of them asking for information or help to get a job at the mine. This already shows the perception of the company as an aspirational workplace, with better wages than those available elsewhere in the area, and it points to the huge challenges for a just energy transition in extractive zones where possible futures have been ‘captured’ (Jaramillo y Cardona 2022).
On the same TikTok channel, the company shares videos of cultural events, Mother’s Day greetings, and celebrations of the national football squad’s victories, among other things. This social media content is thus comparable to older corporate communications formats, such as print magazines or radio shows with light-hearted, positive, varied subjects. There’s an emphasis on the opportunities the mining company offers to women and minorities. Another TikToker is tasked with creating didactic content in Wayuunaiki language, always with Spanish translation and addressing non-Indigenous audiences.
Several of the videos are tagged #SomosNaturaleza (We Are Nature). One of them is titled “Scientific study about mining and biodiversity“, and it consists of a series of short, well-rehearsed direct address segments by three employees in the environmental section of the company, recorded out on the field in a forest area. The Environmental Manager says that this scientific publication “shows that the land rehabilitation carried out by Cerrejon has resulted in a positive strategy for the restoration of wildlife habitats”. The Compensations Superintendent comes in to explain that the article mentions the return of bats and beetles to areas where coal extraction has ended, and the effectiveness of a biological corridor between two mountain ranges. The Compensations Analyst highlights Cerrejon’s contribution to knowledge about ecological restoration processes through its monitoring systems.
It is interesting then to look at the cited article, to understand the framing strategy used here:
Franco-Rozo, M.C. et al. (2024) ‘Biodiversity responses to landscape transformations caused by open-pit coal mining: An assessment on bats and dung beetles in a Colombian tropical dry forest’, Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, 21, p. 100335. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2024.100335.
The article starts with the unsurprising finding that “there is an effect of mining activities on richness, abundance, and diversity of both bats and dung beetles, where, with increased mining activity these indicators are reduced by intensified land use, and this response increase nears the open pits area”. It is true that rehabilitation strategies allow for the return of some species, but not all: there is an ongoing impact on biodiversity. The article highlights the importance of compensation areas, that is, zones that are kept untouched by mining. While it argues that the restoration of some areas can contribute to reintegrate biodiversity corridors, these are supplementary to conservation. In other words, rehabilitation and compensation work to some extent, but only if we accept the destruction of the original habitat as an inevitable starting point, which is to say, if we accept that large-scale mining is an unavoidable activity.
The Censat/CINEP report, Does Cerrejón Always Win? (2023), concludes that: “Despite promises
of social and economic development and after four decades of mining by Carbones del Cerrejón, not only has there been no reduction in poverty, but there has been a deepening and unprecedented humanitarian crisis.” It also reports several instances of human rights violations, forced displacement of communities, and inaction on judicial decisions. Facing such accusations, Glencore claims it is a ‘committed’ and responsible company, “a company that focuses on helping the communities and countries in which it operates”. Despite the relative abundance of alternative media, Glencore’s PR machine across different platforms often manages to take up the discursive space and delegitimise its critics. In this context, the YouTuber and the TikToker play interesting roles, mobilising their communication skills and their identities as young women with a local connection.
