By Sara Gruić, MA
In the midst of climate change, biodiversity loss, and the accelerating degradation of our oceans, environmental activism is increasingly taking place in digital spaces. Platforms such as TikTok became important sites where environmental messages are communicated as well as felt, shared, remixed, and transformed. What makes this relationship between music, sound, and environmental activism interesting is that it does not depend on one musical style or artistic approach.
On TikTok, the same environmental message can be communicated through explicitly activist lyrics, the aesthetic repurposing of popular songs, or immersive soundscapes that encourage audiences to listen to and imagine ecological environments differently. To explore these different possibilities, my research focuses on three musicians who occupy distinct positions within contemporary music and sound culture. AURORA, Strawberry Guy, and Marco Barotti provide contrasting examples of how music can become associated with environmental discourse on TikTok: from intentional ecological messaging to the user-driven recontextualization of popular music, to the creation of soundscapes (Schafer 1977) that directly engage with environmental data and natural environments.
TikTok is a uniquely sonic platform. Unlike traditional environmental campaigns that may rely heavily on statistics, written information, or documentary imagery, TikTok combines short-form video with music, natural sounds, voice, and other forms of audio (Balser-Schuhmann and Kiruka 2024). This combination can make environmental issues more immediate and emotionally engaging. Videos featuring melting ice caps, coral bleaching, endangered marine animals, and polluted oceans can create powerful audiovisual experiences when paired with carefully selected sounds.
AURORA, born Aurora Aksnes, is a Norwegian singer, songwriter, and producer known for her ethereal vocals, atmospheric production, and engagement with themes of nature, humanity, and social and environmental concerns. Raised in Norway, surrounded by forests and mountains, AURORA developed an artistic identity connected to the natural world. Her song “Runaway,” with its melancholic timbre and emotional qualities, is repurposed in #SaveTheOcean videos to accompany images of environmental destruction and vulnerable marine life. Here, music can transform factual environmental content into an affective experience, encouraging viewers to feel a sense of loss, connection, and responsibility towards the natural world.
Another musician, Strawberry Guy offers a different perspective. His indie-pop music, including “F Song,” is often used on TikTok in aesthetic, travel, and nature content. Although the original song is not necessarily about environmental activism, TikTok users can give it new meanings by placing it alongside images of oceans, landscapes, and natural environments. This process demonstrates one of TikTok’s central characteristics: music is continually repurposed and recontextualised by users. A song can acquire new meanings as it travels through different videos and communities.
Moving beyond popular music, Marco Barotti pushes the relationship between sound and environmental awareness even further. His artistic practice includes kinetic sculptures, such as mechanical jellyfish and clams, that sonify real-time environmental data. His work demonstrates how sound itself can become a way of experiencing ecological processes. Rather than simply illustrating environmental problems, these soundscapes invite audiences to listen to the environment and to consider relationships between technology, nature, data, and artistic expression.
While analysing fifteen TikTok videos ― five associated with each artist ― I categorised them into three types: educational intent, affective-aesthetic engagement, and activist calls to action. The analysis suggested that content combining natural soundscapes with popular music can generate strong engagement, reflected in likes, comments, shares, and views of these videos. This combination can create an immersive experience in which environmental information is accompanied by emotional and sensory connections to nature.
On TikTok, environmental messages do not simply move from musicians to audiences. Users actively select, reuse, and remix sounds, giving existing music new meanings through different images and contexts (Baym 2018). In this way, environmental activism becomes memetic, developing through repetition, variation, and circulation (Zulli and Zulli 2022). Drawing on soundscape ecology, acoustemology, and digital platform studies, I explored how these sonic practices can shape the ways people experience and engage with environmental issues.
Yet this process contains an important contradiction. TikTok can provide visibility for environmental causes while simultaneously operating within a digital economy that consumes energy and contributes to digital pollution. The platform is therefore both a space for ecological advocacy and part of the environmental problem.
Ultimately, my research asks us to listen differently to digital environmental activism. Can a song make us care about a melting glacier? Can the sound of an ocean, combined with popular music, create empathy for marine life? And can musicians benefit professionally while contributing to environmental awareness?
The #SaveTheOcean movement suggests that sound matters. On TikTok, music is not a background to environmental activism, but it can be one of the ways activism is felt, shared, and remembered.
About the author
I am a PhD candidate in Musicology at Uppsala University, Sweden. I previously completed a Bachelor’s and a Research Master’s degree in Arts, Media and Literary Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
My doctoral research explores music, technology, and environmental activism on TikTok, focusing on different musical genres, including mainstream pop, experimental soundscapes, and remixed or DIY music. Interested in researching sound studies, particularly at the intersection of music, digital media, and everyday sonic practices.
Contact information: saragruic@gmail.com
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