Same View, Different Visions – Visual Communication and Appropriation of Nature Content on Social Media

While scrolling through landscape photos on your social media feed and posting selfies with your dog may seem apolitical, values generated from human relationships with nature are the foundation for global, transformative change [3, 8], and on social media, where images and videos dominate [6] visual representations of nature are particularly relevant to these relational nature values [2]. ‘Digital relational values’ might incentivize new types of environmental stewardship [7], but these visuals may also be appropriated by those who seek to undermine sustainable transformation, such as right-wing populist movements and fossil fuel industries [4, 5]. For example, naturalistic scenes edited to include white supremacist symbols are a hallmark of online eco-fascism [5]. Research on this phenomenon is especially important as generative AI tools for photos and video are made readily available to social media users [1]. The work we propose combines classical social science methods with machine learning techniques to understand the broad strokes and the gritty details of how digital relational values function visually on social media, especially outside of explicitly political accounts. In this paper we ask the following research question: What is the current state of digital human nature relationships on social media, and how does visual appropriation work to mainstream narratives that are counter to transformative change? More specifically, we will explore (a) how aesthetics and visual value framings are created and spread by segments of society online and (b) whether aesthetics are appropriated to uphold the status quo and potentially push far-right ideologies. We will explore these topics across large social media platforms like Youtube, TikTok, and Weibo to investigate how platform affordances impact this appropriation. Through a careful combination of unsupervised clustering, networked discourse analysis, and manual coding this mixed-methods study is expected to help illuminate the intersection between social media, far-right and extremist groups, and human-nature relationships while advancing the theory of digital nature values and visual appropriation from a critical perspective. The study will showcase that posting hiking photos and selfies with your pet is not only a fun pastime, but an important tool to cultivate human relationships with nature that has the potential to inspire or hamper transformative change. 1. Allyn, B. (2025). Sora gives deepfakes “a publicist and a distribution deal.” It could change the internet. NPR. 2. Calcagni, F. et al. (2023). Plural relational green space values for whom, when, and where? – A social media approach. 3. Chan, K. M. et al. (2018). Editorial overview: Relational values: what are they, and what’s the fuss about? 4. E. Elbeyi et al. (2025) “Information Integrity about Climate Science: A Systematic Review,” Zurich, Switzerland: IPIE, 2025. 5. Hughes, B., Jones, D., & Amarasingam, A. (2022). Ecofascism: An Examination of the Far-Right/Ecology Nexus in the Online Space. 6. Kemp, Simon. (2025). Digital 2025 April Global Statshot Report. 7. Langemeyer, J., & Calcagni, F. (2022). Virtual spill-over effects: What social media has to do with relational values and global environmental stewardship. 8. O’Brien, K et al (2025). IPBES Transformative Change Assessment: Summary for Policymakers.