Energy Citizens “Just Like You”? Public Relations Campaigning by the Climate Change Counter-movement

ABSTRACT The climate change counter-movement (CCCM) was created in 1989 immediately following the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Brulle 2014) and has only deepened its public influence efforts since the Paris Agreement (Besley & Peters 2020). Striving to spread alternative climate change narratives, the CCCM deploys what we characterize as Information and Influence Campaigns (IICs), multimedia campaigns executed by public relations (PR) contractors designed to influence public discourse toward specific conclusions – often by using certain value-laden rhetorical frames. In this paper, we identify the dominant objectives, activities, and rhetorical messaging frames constituting four major IICS surrounding the Waxman-Markey bill debates: one representing each of the three major fossil fuel industries along with the one significant “green” campaign of the era. By tracing the implementation of rhetorical frames across a diverse array of campaign activities to achieve discrete objectives, we demonstrate these fossil actors' clear intentions to steer public opinion toward anti-environmental viewpoints through the use of strategic PR. When considered together with the significant resource advantage held by those that propagate these discourses, the stakes are enormous for both climate policy outcomes and the integrity of the public sphere.


Introduction
During the August 2009 Congressional recess, Energy Citizensa front group created by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and other industry giantsheld a series of rallies across 21 states chosen intentionally for having either "a significant industry presence" or "assets on the ground" (Grandia, 2009c).In a leaked memo sent out in the days before the rallies, API President and CEO Jack Gerard called member organizations to indicate their "strong support for employee participation in the rallies" and "move aggressively in preparation for the post-Labor Day debate on energy, climate, and taxes" (Gerard, 2009).This "strong support" took the form of hiring registered lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry to coordinate the rallies (Kaplun & Mulkern, 2009), covering all logistical and organizational costs (Stone, 2009), and bussing in industry employees from surrounding cities to comprise the attendees (Krauss & Mouawad, 2009)a marked contrast with the Energy Citizens' advertising, which describes the attendees as "truckers, farmers, homemakers, small business people, veterans, and the unemployed" (Harkinson, 2009) who were, according to an API spokesperson, "there because of their own concerns" (Stone, 2009).When interviewed, some rally participants were unsure of its purpose; one attendee at the Houston event said it was about "conserving energy" (Schwartz, 2009).
Since its creation in 1989, the climate change counter-movement (CCCM) has worked to forestall pro-climate legislation by spreading alternative narratives around climate change (Brulle, 2014), especially through the use of public relations (PR) campaigns that involve actors ranging from media specialists to grassroots organizers to lobbyists (Walker, 2014) and operate "for the strategic pursuit of private interests in a way that many observers see as manipulative and undemocratic" (Greenberg et al., 2011, p. 67).The Union of Concerned Scientists has argued that the tactics employed by the fossil fuel industry to deceive the public parallel those of Big Tobacco (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2018), and in fact, the two industries hired many of the same contractors for research and public relations from the 1950s onward (Hulac, 2016).Coordinated climate disinformation campaigns of this caliber have only further proliferated since the Paris Agreement: Fossil fuel interests hold tighter to their business-asusual strategies as the disastrous effects of this trajectory become exceedingly clear.Recognizing the patterns of disinformation applied in the campaigns under investigation here is a first step for scholars, policymakers, and the public to understand their undemocratic sway in the public sphere.
What happens when corporate voices, equipped with disproportionately greater funding and resources, enter spaces of ostensibly democratic public discourse and attempt "to monopolize meanings through strategic communication" (Miller Gaither & Gaither, 2016, p. 590)?In this paper, we explore the ways in which industry groups' PR campaigns leverage their significant resources to sway public opinion for the benefit of a select few.While we do not attempt to establish causal mechanisms between the campaigns themselves and political outcomes, we do aim to demonstrate a pattern of intentional manipulation and disinformation by industry actors to alter decision-making around climate policy debates.We begin by examining the promotional public sphere and the processes that came to naturalize corporate presence in discursive spaces.

The promotional public sphere
We can trace the origins of policy-targeted public relations and advertising to the pre-WWI era, particularly with the work of press agent Ivy Lee.The transformation of the public sphere into a promotional public sphere represented a marked intervention in civil society vis-à-vis a shift from political debates to ascertain the common interest to the application of publicity techniques to secure a political and cultural advantage for a small number of elite individuals, a process Jürgen Habermas (1991) terms "refeudalization." Miller and Lellis (2016) argue that values-based marketplace advertising campaigns represent an "increasingly common" form of refeudalization that effectively "subdue critical debate on contested public issues through promotional discourse that affirms the values of large segments of the public."Empirical analyses demonstrate that promotional campaigns substantially influence public opinion (Pfau et al., 2007) and individual viewpoints even once the sponsored nature of the content is exposed (Cho et al., 2011).This translates to influence in both the public and political arenasfor those with the resources to sustain such campaigns (Cooper & Nownes, 2004, p. 564).Though it has become common practice for all manner of organizations to employ PR (Manheim, 2011, p. 172;Mix & Waldo, 2015, p. 126), vested economic interests far outspend civic organizations on issue advertising (Falk et al., 2006;Hauser, 2012;Lee, 2017).
While it may not be realistic to demand all "public debate [emerge] from the ground up" (Jacobs & Townsley, 2011, p. 6), the intrusion of extremely powerful actors working to overwrite the voices of the less resourced represents a serious affront to the democratic process, generating an uncritical public in issues where a "wide-ranging and vigorous public debate" is necessary to "[realize] … democratic negotiation" (Magnan, 2006, p. 26).

Information and Influence Campaigns
Information and Influence Campaigns (IICs) emerge as discrete products of the public sphere, representing systemic, sequential, and multifaceted effort[s] to promote information that orients the political decision-making process toward desired outcomes (Brulle & Werthman, 2021;Manheim, 2011, p. 18).Consolidating promotional content into systematized rhetoric, these campaigns often occur in the time leading up to major discursive events like elections, legislative votes, or Conference of the Parties (COP) climate discussions.
We chose to characterize IICs according to three key attributes: campaign objectives, activities, and rhetorical messaging frames.In our analysis, tracking campaign objectives identifies the directions in which these campaigns endeavored to steer public opinion, offering insight into the CCCM's biggest priorities.Surveying campaign activities reveals the extensive reach of these discourses and specific strategies employed by the CCCM to maximize public exposure.Analyzing rhetorical messaging frames illuminates the deeper, manipulative leverage of cultural values and belief systems to sway public opinion in a certain desired direction.Together, these three dimensions shed light on the processes and strategies that constitute IICs, thereby offering insight into the workings of the CCCM.

Rhetorical analysis of value-based frames
Robert M. Entman (1993) defines the communications term of art "framing" as "[selecting] some aspects of a perceived reality and [making] them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation" (52).Frames are the paradigms that favor these certain definitions, making them key tools to leveraging discursive power in the public sphere.Much scholarship attests to the value of examining "how corporate advocates frame their discourse for public consumption" (Schneider et al., 2016, p. 16).Supran and Oreskes (2021), for example, argue in their analysis of rhetorical frames employed by ExxonMobil that identifying the dominant frames in public discourse "helps to reveal how actors have tried to shape policy debates by setting agendas and legitimating certain participants and responses, while discouraging or precluding others" (696-697).
These frames often lean heavily on established value systems, linking promotional rhetorics to strict moral frameworks, political partisanship, and the artificial fomentation of uncertainty (Jacobs & Townsley, 2011).Energy corporations in particular often employ this tactic of emphasizing valuebased appeals rather than their activities in their promotional texts (Cozen, 2018;Miller & Lellis, 2016).Tim Wood (2018), for example, identifies the dominant frames in ten years of debate around TransCanada's Keystone XL project, including environment, economy, energy security, national image, and foreign intervention.In their work on fossil fuel marketplace advocacy , Miller Gaither & Gaither (2016) identify "the industry supporter: America's everyman/everywoman," a frame "featuring individuals of all ethnicities/races, gender, ages, and occupations" to portray a diverse base of support for the energy industry in question.These frames tie the objectives of each campaign to larger personal, national, and electoral values, effectively redirecting public attention from the actual activities and impact of their respective energy sources in order to advance industry interests.

CCCM discourses in the promotional public sphere
With the emergence of the CCCM, the past three decades have seen a notable rise in promotional campaigning in the climate space.The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) front group, established in 1989, was one of the most prominent and well-funded early organizations using coordinated public relations to campaign, advertise, and promote political advocacy on behalf of the fossil fuel industry (McGregor, 2008, p. 5).It also represented the advent of a technique called "astroturfing," the construction of manufactured front groups intended to represent public organizations or grassroots efforts (Dryzek et al., 2011, p. 154;Schneider et al., 2016).Bsumek et al. (2014) consider this deception through what they term "corporate ventriloquism," a strategy intended to create the sense that the public is "speaking with one voice" about an issue and allowing the industry to "[mask] its own influence over the spaces and conditions for voice and undermines the value of dissenting, textured, and independent voices in public discussions." Astroturfing represents just one tactic by which corporations have asserted their role in the climate conversation.Another increasingly familiar strategy, greenwashing, entails the implementation of "a variety of different misleading communications that aim to form overly positive beliefs among stakeholders about a company's environmental practices" (Torelli et al., 2020).Greenwashing "allows corporations to manipulate an image of environmental, social, and cultural responsiveness," deceiving the public and obscuring the social and environmental impacts of "actual corporate practices" (Munshi & Kurian, 2005).
Relatedly, corporations have increasingly participated in institutional advocacy advertising designed to bolster their reputation and increase brand recognition under labels of "corporate citizenship" or "corporate social responsibility" (Utting & Ives, 2006).These are especially prominent within the fossil fuel industry as part of a complex web of campaigning to establish public and political legitimacy and support (Cho et al., 2006;Szczypka et al., 2007).Mobil Oil was one of the first major industry players to adopt a comprehensive PR strategy of this nature in a 1982 campaign that strove to "position the company as an outspoken expert" on energy issues, thereby granting it entry into spheres of public issue debate around climate policy (John III, 2014).Other oil majors like Chevron and BP followed suit, launching similar campaigns designed to manufacture public trust in their alleged environmental effortsa strategic move allowing the industry to reframe its efforts as respecting the prevailing scientific consensus while maintaining, or even expanding, anti-environmental operations and profit (Böhm & Sullivan, 2021).The rise in institutional advocacy advertising was thus underscored by a discursive shift from the denial of climate change to the delay of policy implementation, a move that took place during and after debates around the Waxman-Markey bill.

Information and Influence Campaigns surrounding Waxman-Markey
These features of CCCM discourse crystallized into a number of IICs that emerged in the lead-up to the vote on the American Clean Energy and Security Actmore commonly known as the Waxman-Markey billduring which time "media attention to global warming … globally and in the US" reached a peak (Kukkonen et al., 2017, p. 716).The Waxman-Markey bill sought to establish a cap-and-trade system to limit and regulate greenhouse gas emissions.Proposed in the House in 2009, the bill ultimately failed in the Senate in 2010, marking a major setback for federal decarbonization efforts.Theda Skocpol (2013) points to the role of GOP-corporate linkages in blocking the bill; entrenched years in advance, these networks were well prepared to mobilize for these pivotal cap-and-trade debates in ways including the dissemination of strategic climate change narratives in the media.
The defeat of Waxman-Markey marked a definitive shift in CCCM discourses from outright denial of climate change toward justification of inaction and objection to effective efforts toward decarbonization, or "discourses of delay."William F. Lamb et al. (2020) argue that these discourses advocate for ineffective solutions, redirect responsibility, and propagate fear of change, thereby creating a cycle of inaction and rhetoric of surrender.While discourses of delay and their accompanying rhetorical strategies do not operate to the exclusion of climate denial (Lamb et al., 2020, p. 2), they primarily function as what Leah Ceccarelli (2011) characterizes as an "epistemological filibuster" (p.197) to delay regulation or other policy change.The major IICs that emerged during the pre-and post-Waxman-Markey era bear the clear imprint of this transition.Rather than denying climate science, they employ rhetorical messaging that creates "strategic ambiguity" (Schneider et al., 2016) around non-legislative "solutions" to climate change and tethers fossil fuels to established value frameworks, steering the conversation away from environmental impacts altogether.

Methods
Our preliminary research centered around three main questions: 1. What strategies and tactics did the selected campaigns employ to manipulate the public?2. What does the ensemble of these campaigns illustrate about the promotional public sphere around climate change?3. What do these campaigns reveal about the workings of the CCCM?

Case selection
We chose 4 illustrative case studies (Table 1) to analyze, each representing one of the most significant campaign effortsin terms of both dollars spent and impact on the discursive landscapefrom its given industry (oil, coal, natural gas, and "green" interests) in the lead-up to and aftermath of the Waxman-Markey vote.Our selections thus represent the dominant campaigns from their respective "discourse coalitions," defined by Kukkonen et al. (2017) as "groups of organizations that voice similar beliefs in the media debate" (p.716).

Inductive discourse analysis
The categories within each of the three attributes were established according to grounded theory's inductive approach.Since Glaser and Strauss (1967) first developed the grounded theory approach, it has become a dominant method in interdisciplinary research that considers diverse information sources around complex issues (Khagram et al., 2010).Inductive coding in particular allows concepts and relations to emerge during the data collection process, thereby eliminating the need to source initial categories and definitions from a single discipline (Corbin & Strauss, 1990).This proves particularly useful for our approach here as we discern patterns across a set of campaigns to then use as insights into the promotional public sphere and CCCM.
We surveyed the relevant literature and identified the emergent themes, then examined the selected literature to chart the presence or absence of each across the different campaigns.First, we ran a keyword source using each of the campaign and organization names for publications released between 2008-2015.This included public relations trade journals (a total of 64 issues each of O'Dwyer's and PR Week), as well as investigative journalism from both larger outlets (2920 issues of The New York Times, 416 issues of The Wall Street Journal, and 2496 issues of The Guardian) and local publications when cited in these larger journals.We used the same keywords to search corporate accountability sites like Sourcewatch and the Climate Investigations Center; social media like Facebook and LinkedIn; PR award records; iSpot TV; and the body of relevant peer-reviewed literature with search engines Google Scholar and BruKnow, the Brown University library system.We also used the Wayback Machine to find past PR contracts and project descriptions.
It is worth noting that, by their very nature, IICs are difficult to study.Carried out by public relations firms under private contracts, these campaigns and their underlying strategies are The Clean Coal Campaign

2008-2012
The Hawthorn Group, White and Partners, Virilion American Petroleum Institute (API), National Association of Manufacturers, and others

2009-2013
Edelman, DDC Advocacy America's Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) The Think About It Campaign

2013-2015
Glover Park Group, Porter Novelli designed to stay hidden.It follows that much research on IICs, particularly in the realm of climate change, relies on secondary data like the sources listed above or, in some cases, leaked campaign documents.Our analysis includes leaked documents that we encountered in the course of the literature review.
From our inductive coding process, we identified two dominant public influence objectives: (a) influencing public opinion around specific legislation and (b) improving public opinion of a given energy source.We identified the following campaign activities: social media, print ads, TV ads, radio ads, Internet ads, outdoor display ads, astroturfing, lobbying, and other tactics.While lobbying does not constitute public influence, we included it regardless to demonstrate the fuller extent of these campaigns' political reach.We identified economy, environment, energy security, nationalism, and community care as the dominant rhetorical frames.

Quantitative analysis
We obtained advertising spending data from Kantar Media for the selected clients during the years of campaign activity, and also pulled IRS Form 990s to track financial contributions.

Results
We charted our results in a series of tables representing each attribute: campaign objectives (Table 2), campaign activities (Table 3), and rhetorical messaging (Table 4).For full campaign profiles, see the Supplemental Material.

Campaign objectives
Naming the discrete public influence objectives of each campaign grounds our subsequent analyses in these campaigns' overarching intentions, offering insight into general campaign strategy and CCCM priorities.The dominance of two major objectives across the four campaigns reveals the centrality of public influence around legislative and general energy source opinions to the sphere of environmental discourse.

Influencing public opinion around specific legislation
The We Campaign.The We Campaign was designed with the explicit intention of generating support for a national carbon emission cap vis-à-vis the Waxman-Markey bill.As articulated by Al Gore in a speech espousing the importance of "a new global pact on climate change" at the time of the campaign's launch, "'It's important to change the light bulbs, but it's much more important to change the laws'" (Eilperin, 2008).
The Clean Coal Campaign.Generating public opinion against the Waxman-Markey bill via public outreach, education, and stakeholder collaboration was a primary goal of the Clean Coal Campaign, according to its IRS Form 990s (IRS, 2008(IRS, , 2009)).Energy Citizens Campaigning.Energy Citizens campaigning explicitly targeted the defeat of Waxman-Markey.Coordinated front group demonstrations were timed around the bill's vote, and promotional fliers at these rallies told participants they must ask their Senators to "get it right" on climate legislation (Kaplun, 2009).

Improving public opinion of a certain energy source
The We Campaign.In a speech delivered at Constitution Hall on July 17, 2008, Gore called for a guarantee of "good jobs in the fresh air and sunshine" (Judkis, 2008) and introduced the sub-campaign Repower America, which expressed the intention to "Repower America with 100% clean electricity within 10 years" (The Alliance for Climate Protection, 2008).
The Clean Coal Campaign.The Clean Coal Campaign was designed to brand coal as a "clean" fuel source by creating and influencing public opinion around "coal-based electricity's role in providing affordable, reliable and domestically produced electricity, and the role that advanced technologies will play in making coal an even cleaner energy source for the future" (IRS, 2008).In its newsletter, The Hawthorn Group presented poll results demonstrating the success of this consistent public messaging in increasing public support for coal (Grandia, 2009a).
Energy Citizens Campaigning.Improving public opinion of oil was a primary objective of Energy Citizens.According to a script intercepted by Greenpeace from a commercial shoot for API's Vote 4 Energy ad suite, recruited actors were instructed to repeat lines asserting that "[energy independence] will come from our own energy resources like oil and natural gas" and otherwise touting the advantages of these domestic fuels (Davies, 2011).
The Think About It Campaign.The Think About It campaign sought to make the public "see natural gas as a 'foundational fuel,'" according to Martin Durbin, ANGA's president and CEO at the time (NGI Staff Reports, 2013).Celia Fischer, ANGA's Vice President of Strategic Communications, likewise stated the campaign's emphasis on public opinion of gas: "'We hope there is a heightened awareness among policymakers and regulators, but the focus is more toward the general public.The main message we want to communicate is that natural gas is cleaner, affordable, reliable, and it's abundant nowwhich it was not before'" (Nichols, 2014).

Campaign activities
By identifying the depth and breadth of activities employed by each campaign, we can start to visualize the extent of promotional avenues through which the CCCM operates.All four campaigns went beyond traditional advertising to reach the public on various media platforms and/or with manufactured astroturf groups, demonstrating a level of tactical consistency within the promotional public sphere around climate and energy.Together with the breadth of techniques used to reach the public, this overlap in promotional mechanisms elucidates the scale and intensity of the CCCM's intrusion into the democratic public sphere.

Social media
The We Campaign.The We Campaign created an online grassroots mobilization platform called "We Connect" which allowed individuals to write blogs, share campaign materials and information about climate change, connect with other organizers, host events, and learn how to contact elected officials about climate legislation (We Can Solve It, 2009).
The Clean Coal Campaign.The Clean Coal Campaign used social media to document and post ACCCE's electoral mobilization activities to their website, Facebook, Flickr, blog, and YouTube channel, according to a Hawthorn Group internal memo (Grandia, 2009a).
Energy Citizens Campaigning.Energy Citizens campaigning involved a "Share Your Stories" forum for website testimonials from citizens identified by their first name and state (Hickman, 2009).Speculation as to these individuals' identities within the broader oil interest group network includes the case of "Shaka from Tennessee," who shares a "striking resemblance" to Shaka Mitchell, Executive Vice President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Researchwhich directs its website visitors to the Carnival of Climate Change skeptics site (Hickman, 2009;Mitchell, 2022) and previous head of outreach for the Institute for Justice, a Koch-funded libertarian think tank (Harkinson, 2009).Energy Citizens' social media presence, including the campaign's Vote 4 Energy YouTube advertising, persisted much later than 2013 (American Petroleum Institute, n.d.).
The Think About It Campaign.The Think About It campaign included a website used to garner audience engagement and proliferate information positioning natural gas as vital for both the American economy and people's everyday livelihoods (Holmes, 2001).The campaign used traditional photography on Twitter and native videos (played "in-feed" rather than linking to an external site) on Facebook, strategically tailoring content according to the two platforms' user bases (Holmes, 2001).

Other media advertisements
We identified other media advertisementsprint, TV, radio, internet, and outdoor display adsalmost universally in the We Campaign, Clean Coal Campaign, and Think About It campaign.See the full campaign profiles in the Supplemental Material for additional information on multimedia advertising in each campaign.

Astroturfing
The We Campaign.The We Campaign established field organizers in over two dozen states (Skocpol, 2013) and "held dozens of town hall meetings to put pressure on congressional leaders" (Bartosiewicz & Miley, 2013), also partnering with organizations including the Girl Scouts, the National Audubon Society (Candid, 2008), and the Blue-Green Alliance (McKenna, 2008).
The Clean Coal Campaign.A leaked strategy memo from Steve Miller, CEO of ACCCE, describes how the Clean Coal Campaign "activated" its "citizen army" to call targeted Senators, "urging them to vote against [Waxman-Markey]" (Grandia, 2009b).The memo boasted the success of these onthe-ground mobilization efforts in creating backlash against climate legislation (Engelhardt, 2004).
Energy Citizens Campaigning.As one of the longest-running third-party front groups for fossil fuel industry interests (Energy Citizens, n.d.), the Energy Citizens group applied what Ian Talley (2009) of the Wall Street Journal describes as "town hall tactics"creating the appearance of grassroots support for objectives seeded by API.In a memo addressed to member organizations, API President Jack Gerard described the August, 2009 Energy Citizens rallies as designed "to put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy," adding that "recent opinion research [demonstrated] that our messages on Waxman-Markey-like legislation work extremely well and are very persuasive with the general public and policy influentials" (Gerard, 2009).Notably, at the time of the campaign's launch in 2009, Edelmanthe campaign's primary PR contractoracquired Multiplier, a software platform designed to identify "logical supporters" and apply a "methodical and deliberate approach designed to convert average citizens into issue activists" (Edelman, 2014;Merchant, 2014).

Lobbying
The We Campaign.In the lead-up to the Waxman-Markey vote, We Campaign staffers wearing "Repower America" T-shirts distributed flyers to the House of Representatives, and The Climate Action Protection Funda branch of Repower Americacommitted small dollar amounts to lobbying for the bill in the Senate (Davenport & Samuelsohn, 2010;Marshall, 2009).
The Clean Coal Campaign.According to The New York Times, the ACCCE spent $360,000 on direct lobbying to oppose the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in 2009 (Mulkern, 2009) funding deployed concurrently with the multimillion-dollar Clean Coal Campaign.

Other activities
The Think About It Campaign.The Think About It campaign also held "Think About It Energy Summits" in states where the fracking industry was most highly concentrated (Nichols, 2014).Targeting an elite audience of stakeholders in powerful positions, the summits emphasized the benefits of natural gas, bringing in high-profile speakers (Bennett, 2013) and also asserting that the campaign knew of no ground water contamination due to gas fracking (Harrison, 2013).

Rhetorical messaging frames
Finally, by charting the presence of specific messaging frames across these campaigns, we illuminate the strategic rhetoric at the heart of these IICs.Identifying patterns of value-based framing sheds light on the deeper psychological pull of the CCCM's promotional content as it co-opts established cultural value systems to steer public opinion toward discrete objectives.De Vries et al. (2015) highlight the trend for fossil corporations increasingly under fire for greenwashing to turn their promotional efforts toward highlighting the economic advantages of their given fuel source.Brian Cozen (2018) points to the manner in which "fossil fuel promotional logics" seek to associate these energies with the "generative force" (p.324) central to human activity and productivity, thereby working to "naturalize current energy systems as conditions of possibility" (p.337).All four campaigns we investigated utilize economic framing by tying the specific legislative outcomes and/or certain fuel sources to financial well-being and the allure of continued economic growth, while painting the alternatives as personal or national economic threats.Following Wood (2018), we count references to the domestic economy, job creation, and consumer expenses as within this category.

Economy
The We Campaign.The We Campaign leveraged economic arguments around domestic job creation and wealth.In his July 2008 speech, Gore asserted, "When we send money to foreign countries to buy nearly 70 percent of the oil we use every day, they build new skyscrapers and we lose jobs.
When we spend that money building solar arrays and windmills, we build competitive and gain jobs here at home" (Judkis, 2008).
The Clean Coal Campaign.Stills from an advertisement of the The Clean Coal Campaign state "We have centuries of a proven domestic energy source, a fuel America depends on […] Coalit's abundant, affordable, and it's ours" (White & Partners, 2012a).Another ad states, "[Regulations from Washington come] between low cost energy and high paying jobs" (White & Partners, 2012b).
Energy Citizens Campaigning.Template flyers for the August 2009 Energy Citizens rallies claimed, "Climate change legislation being considered in Washington will cause huge economic pain," adding that the passage of Waxman-Markey would "cost 2 million American jobs" and "raise gasoline and diesel prices up to $4" (Talley, 2009)an estimate inconsistent with the EPA estimate that the bill would cost U.S. households "about a postage stamp a day" (Center for Media and Democracy, 2022).The Energy Citizens website employed similar rhetoric, prompting visitors to "sign up for email alerts to oppose 'energy taxes'" (Kaplun & Mulkern, 2009).
The Think About It Campaign.Both Celia Fischer, ANGA's Vice President of Strategic Communications, and Dan Whitten, ANGA spokesperson, articulated the affordability, reliability, and abundance of natural gas as the "main message" of the Think About It campaign (NGI Staff Reports, 2013;Nichols, 2014).

Environment
Aside from greenwashing and other attempts to manufacture a company's stewardship image, another major environmental framing tactic is the propagation of what Leah Ceccarelli (2011) characterizes as "manufactured controversy."This strategy strives to create the illusion of "ongoing scientific debate about a matter for which there is actually an overwhelming scientific consensus" (Ceccarelli, 2011, p. 195).Schneider et al. (2016) also identify "the technological shell game," which generates "strategic ambiguity about the feasibility, costs, and successful implementation of technologies in order to deflect attention from environmental pollution and health concerns" (p.79).These tactics assuage consumer conscience while portraying energy corporations as authorities in the climate conversation.
The We Campaign.In a 2008 phone interview with Washington Post, Gore noted that The We Campaign "was undertaken in large part because of his fear that U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to curb the human-generated emissions linked to climate change" and that "[t]he options available to civilization worldwide […] are beginning to slip away from us" (Eilperin, 2008).
The Clean Coal Campaign.In a leaked memo, ACCCE President Steve Miller outlined the Clean Coal Campaign's intentional environmental framing, stating "Our goal is straightforward: persuade states that voluntary sequestration activities and technology investments are appropriate policies to address climate change concerns, while government mandatory controls are not" (Engelhardt, 2004).
This frame dominates ACCCE's suite of Clean Coal TV ads.In a video announcing their rollout, Miller claims, "The next challenge is reducing CO 2 emissions.And we'll meet that challenge just like we did with other emissions.By advancing in new, advanced, clean coal technologies" (Balanced Energy, 2008b).A Technology Spot advertisement demonstrates this appeal at work.Over video of what appears to be the Wright Brothers sending the first plane into liftoff, a voice reads, "Throughout history, new ideas have often been met with skepticism."It continues, "But technology born from American ingenuity can achieve amazing things," as a hand screws a lightbulb into place, illuminating the screen.The voiceover then describes the ACCCE's "commitment to clean," which entails the continued use of coal paired with "the capture and storage of CO 2 " (Balanced Energy, 2008a).
Energy Citizens Campaigning.The Energy Citizens leaned heavily on artificial controversy.At the Canton, Ohio rally held on September 7, 2010, Sgt.Dennis Bartow called climate change a "hoax," and Karen Wright, CEO of the gas company Ariel Corporation, claimed that the spilled oil from the Deepwater spill was "all gone," also referring to climate change as "questionable science" (Keyes, 2018).
The Think About It Campaign.In a Think About It campaign advertisement entitled "UPS -Think About It," a UPS employee attests to the environmental benefits of increased natural gas use in delivery trucks' fuel mix, noting that the trucks "reduce emissions, and that's good for everyone" (NatGasNow, 2014b).The advertisement continues, "We're committed to cleaner air for our customers and our communities.Natural gas helps us do that … We're a very large global company, so we have to think about sustainability."

Energy security
Appeals to energy security portray fossil energies and energy infrastructures as "stabilizing" (Cozen, 2018) and any move away from them as consequently risky and threatening.Schneider et al. (2016) capture this latter in their "industrial apocalyptic" frame, which entails "a set of rhetorical appeals that constitute the imminent demise of a particular industry, economic, or political system and the catastrophic ramifications associated with that loss" (p.3).Tim Wood (2018) includes arguments that domestic fossil energies will improve security, as well as the claim that "oil-based connections to unstable allies … threaten national security" (p.268).
The Clean Coal Campaign.An advertisement titled "Rock of our Prosperity" features a voiceover claiming that "Washington has taken us down … a path relying on fads, not fuels, a path leading away from energy independence" (Miller Gaither & Gaither, 2016).As the narrator transitions from referencing "fads" to "energy independence," an image of picketers wearing green hats in the street is replaced with a large pile of coal.
Another ad superimposes a close-up of coal with a voice saying, "You're looking at the most abundant fuel in our country … You're looking at an American resource that will help us toward vital energy security" (Balanced Energy, 2009b).
The Think About It Campaign.The Think About It campaign frequently employed appeals to reliable energy access, particularly by creating fear around the inadequacy of renewable energy.An ad titled "Florida Power & Light-Think About It" depicts a solar plant accompanied by a voiceover stating, "It's not enough to meet our customers' needs … That's why we need natural gas" (NatGasNow, 2014a).

Nationalism
Nationalistic appeals, such as those Wood (2018) highlights in his "national image" frame, underscore arguments that certain energy sources will strengthen the domestic agenda or are necessary to sustain the American way of lifeas well as fear-based claims that everyday Americans will bear the burden of sacrifice in the case of a renewable transition (Miller Gaither & Gaither, 2016).
The We Campaign.The We Campaign branded its slogan, "Repower America," on advertisements and t-shirts 2009), striving to associate its renewable mission with pro-American sentiment.In his July 2008 Constitution Hall speech, Al Gore appealed to competitive domestic industry and argued it necessary to move with boldness in a time when "our democracy has become sclerotic" in order to "avoid offending special interests" (Judkis, 2008).
The Clean Coal Campaign.Nationalistic rhetoric abounds in the Clean Coal Campaign, beginning with the name of its supporting organization, Americans for Clean Coal Electricity.In an advertisement titled "America's Power," a voiceover states, "Now is the time to use your votes to send leaders to Washington who will return us to the road that made America great" (ACCCE, 2012b).
An advertisement titled "Clean Coal Adios TV Spot" begins, "We wish we could say farewell to our dependence on foreign energy, and we'd like to say adios to rising energy costs."The voiceover claims that "we" need to shed "our outdated perceptions" about coal and embrace "new clean coal technologies," continuing that "if we don't, we might have to say goodbye to the American way of life we all know and love" (Balanced Energy, 2009a).

Energy Citizens
Campaigning.An Energy Citizens rally held in Houston before the Waxman-Markey vote featured "rodeo announcer and local celebrity" Bill Bailey, free hot dogs, hamburgers, and T-shirts with lines like "Create American Jobs Don't Export Them," leading journalist Scott Keyes to characterize the result "as much a celebration of oil's traditional role in the Texas way of life as it was a political protest against Washington's energy policies" (Krauss & Mouawad, 2009).
The Think About It Campaign.Online advertisements run by The Think About It campaign aimed to position natural gas as a "foundational fuel" (NGI Staff Reports, 2013) for the American economy and people's everyday lives (America's Natural Gas Alliance, 2013a; America's Natural Gas Alliance, 2013b), characterizing natural gas as "a fuel America depends on" (White & Partners, 2012a).

Community care
Appeals to community care endeavor to make the promoting industry more socially and politically palatable by creating the impression that local and marginalized communities and everyday people are high on the list of corporate priorities.It operates as a type of reputation management, both appropriating marginalized communities to create the illusion of support from diverse communities and appealing to political democracy with an "everyman" politics.Closely tied to astroturfing and other more explicitly deceptive tactics, this frame is among the most controversial of the appeals listed, since the policies and systems advanced by industry campaigns tend to stand in functional opposition to the health and well-being of marginalized and non-elite groups (Munshi & Kurian, 2005).
The Clean Coal Campaign.In a 2009 scandal, Clean Coal Campaign contractor The Hawthorn Group was caught forging letters with the NAACP letterhead expressing concern about the Waxman-Markey bill.These letters contained passages like, "We support making the environment cleaner, [but we are] concerned about our electric bills.Many of our members are on tight budgets, and the sizes of their monthly utility bills are important expense items" (Strom, 2009).
Introducing a new round of Clean Coal advertisements, Steve Miller said, "The folks in the ad are a lot like most of us," continuing on to list the beliefs of this alleged majority: namely, that "we can meet our shared environmental goals … and still have affordable, reliable power using domestic resources, like coal" (Balanced Energy, 2008b).
Energy Citizens Campaigning.In its astroturf tactics, Energy Citizens emphasized traditional "grassroots" values of unity from the ground-up with imagery of political mobilization led by the "everyman," as highlighted on the website's front page introducing "the stories of Energy Citizens like you" coming from all 50 states to "make our voices heard" (Energy Citizens, n.d.).
The Think About It Campaign.ANGA's "UPS-Think About It" advertisement states, "People here know that our operations have an impact locally.We're committed to cleaner air for our customers and our communities.Natural gas helps us do that" (NatGasNow, 2014b).

Discussion
In this paper, we trace the strategic operation of four Information and Influence Campaigns from their discrete public influence objectives to diverse campaign activities designed to widely disseminate tactical rhetorical messaging.Our analysis exposes these campaigns as coordinated attempts to manipulate public opinion for the benefit of a select few by establishing the authority of corporate actors in the climate conversation.When we layer this understanding with the severe resource imbalance between pro-and anti-environmental campaigns, we begin to understand the significant threat posed by the PR industry's intrusion into the spaces of democratic public discourses.This is not a paper about political outcomes.However, our analysis demonstrates, at the very least, a clear intention to manipulate discourses for discrete industry purposeswith the funding power to back it.
Perhaps most obviously, this research raises the practical question of why PR remains unregulated.Even as the oil and gas industries have accumulated record profits off the war in Ukraine, exploiting geopolitical anxieties and tightened supply as millions suffer (Global Witness, 2023), they are permitted to continue deceptive greenwashing and astroturfing practices.There does, however, exist some momentum toward regulationnamely, the Federal Trade Commission's updated "green guides" which establish clearer guidelines around the types of environmental claims companies are allowed to make (Hudson, 2023).Our research points to the urgent need for more action in this direction.
This work also contributes to the field of rhetorical studies, including both environmental discourses and broader trends.Our analysis demonstrates how rhetorical frames link promotional content to certain established values or belief systems, effectively co-opting these frameworks to meet their desired objectives.We have shown how the CCCM in particular uses strategic rhetorical messaging as a part of broader climate delay narratives to frame climate change in a way that distracts from actual problems and constructive solutions.We hope that our work inspires further scholarship on these types of strategic communication efforts, with an emphasis on the ways in which advertisingeven when recognized as suchfunctions to assert a consistent corporate presence in spaces of public debate.
Relatedly, this work demonstrates the threat that campaigns of this nature pose to the general integrity of the public sphere.While it may come as no surprise that corporations are advancing discourses designed to increase profits, the fact that they are doing so with the express intention to deceive and manipulate the public, supported by an extreme funding and resource advantage, represents an affront to spaces of democratic discourse.When "corporate ventriloquism becomes the preferred modality of voice under neoliberalism" (Bsumek et al., 2014), public opinion necessarily upholds discourses that maintain corporate power and profits, prioritizing the "wants of marketers" over the often conflicting "needs of citizens" (Greenberg & Knight, 2009).
In a healthy public sphere, "deliberate, thoughtful, contention is understood to be a democratic mode of deliberation that produces rational public opinion to which democratic governments can then be held accountable" (Jacobs & Townsley, 2011, p. 7).To denaturalize energy industries' presence in our discursive spaces and "reveal transformations outside of [fossil fuel] systems" (Betsill & Stevis, 2016;Cozen, 2018, p. 337), we must first understand the strategic processes by which these corporations have declared a seat at the discussion table.Only then can we imagine a truly democratic public sphere in which the loudest voices on climate change do not come from coal, oil, and natural gas.

Table 1 .
Campaigns selected for comparative analysis.