Abstract

In ordinary times, people are driven Weiskel by an innate universal human need to feel good about themselves as they try to achieve happiness by living as one was inherently intended to live. But large-scale global crises, such as the climate emergency, have prompted the need to reassess our oneness and reconstruct what we understand as our ‘self’ identity when our way of living is in danger. Faced with a collective threat, priorities of happiness are being revised to include what is beneficial for not just the individual, or even that of a collective humanity facing an existential crisis, but for the ‘planetary self’.Contemporary climate campaigning on social media platforms uses a rhetorical construction of collective identity—or what we call the collective selfie—where humanity is embedded in the natural environment through visual and rhetorical means. These ecocentric collective selfies—by actors as diverse as film star/environmentalist Arnold Schwarzenegger to brand name NGOs like Greenpeace—promote positive messaging about living in harmony with nature and its resources, and often act as instances of successful environmental communications.Yet, whilst the climate activism of Hollywood stars and ‘celebrity’ NGOs positions the self (whether this be the individual or collective humankind) on par with environmental wellbeing and sustainability, we suggest that the rational homo economicus, on whom the traditional pursuit of happiness is based on, is in fact part of an increasing psychological distancing from the unspecified future dangers of the climate crisis. In becoming part of the PR machinery of social media environmentalism, these collective selfies take on a dual purpose: on one hand, they promote environmental awareness; on the other, they act as promotional self-branding.By exploring the ways these celebrity ‘agents’ harness the power of the collective selfie to offer positive imagery through the rhetoric of happiness, we evaluate whether they profess an authentic sense of ‘environmental happiness’ (defined by sustainable, harmonious approaches to environmental resources) or if they in fact comprise a form of greenwashing, designed to use the collective selfie to promote their celebrity persona. Through this, we explore whether a new ‘collective pursuit of happiness’ can be part of a campaign to generate awareness through the dynamics of the collective selfie or whether they in fact offer a collective eudaimonic alternative to the individual hedonic rationale for happiness. By interrogating the social media discussion this messaging has generated, we ask if by making users feel happy (intentionality), are these positive messages making us more complacent (outcome) about how we are tackling the dangers?Whilst we focus on critiquing the dynamics underlying such messaging, we also gesture towards an understanding of how positive messages of environmental happiness on virtual platforms can influence the perception of crises such as the climate emergency and propose potential strategies to increase collective happiness and eventually impactful climate action during the handling of a global crisis such as the climate emergency.