Will the Oil Sands’ growing Social Media Spill be Environmentalists’ Gain?

The Albertan Oil Sands’ rocky time with coverage generated by opponents like Neil Young, and Robert Redford, may be nothing compared to the social media coverage spilling from its workers on site. Can big oil use the tools availalbe to mop up the spill?

The media spill over the Albertan Oil Sands generated by Canadian rocker Neil Young, and Keystone XL naysayer Robert Redford, isn’t the only mess oil companies need to clean up. Social media coming out of the Oil Sands, or if you’re old school and haven’t taken to the rebranding — Tar Sands, tells an increasingly off message story. It’s a series of public updates that without intervention gives fuel to those who oppose the ecologically contentious extraction and processing of tar-like bitumen into oil.

Using EchoSec, a geospatial social media search platform, it’s easy for anyone and any organization to examine the social media coming out of the Fort McMurray area. What one sees is not the clean, safe development of a natural resource polished for public consumption by oil sands supporters. Instead, the raw social media stream posted by oil sands workers is unaccompanied by the traditional “clean and safe oil” government and corporate spin. Call the stream “social media bitumen” then, unrefined and un-messaged freely posted public information awaiting processing.

Many of these are not new images. The aerial views of sweeping tracts of devastation are nothing new, but social media offers a more intimate view of the oil sands.

For oil sands opposition digging through usual social media mix of selfies and over-tagged Instagrams, could yield valuable information.

For others this view provides insight into the muck, grime and labour of day to day work in the Fort McMurray area. There is a certain honour to it — it’s honest work done by people aiming to make their lives and those of their families better.

Where the record starts to stray from family friendly and safe oil is in the growing record of on site incidents.