A Netnography Study of the Social Media Influencers on Creating Netizens' Climate Change Awareness on Instagram

Climate change is one of the United Nations (UN) programs, as stated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Geographically, Indonesia is located in the equator area, including a quite vulnerable country, so it is necessary to build netizens awareness regarding Indonesia's climate change issue. This study aims to describe the online interaction between social media influencers (SMI) with netizens to create climate change awareness on Instagram. This study uses netnographic methods and data collection through online observation on 6 Instagram accounts of social media influencers categorized as Indonesian celebrities. This study concludes that there is a lack of interaction between influencers and netizens since the influencer's engagement level still below the average industrial standard, so they need to increase the interaction, discussion, and engagement with the netizens from the Y and Z generation. The interaction between social media influencers and netizens can create climate change awareness on Instagram. But, the amount of influencers’ status is very little. So, the impact of the campaign on the netizens’ awareness is quite weak. Most of influencers do not create an impressive status on Instagram. To attract netizens’ engagement, they should be occupied by the attractive quality of photos, videos, visual storytelling, captions, and hashtags related to climate change issues. The netizens' climate change awareness could be built through the variety influencers’ campaign such as on the annual special moments to commemorate Earth Day, World Environment Day, and National Waste Care Day