Climate Champion: Leonardo Wilhelm Dicaprio
Social media gives us greater insight and lets us explore beyond our imagination. Social Media is not only with interacting with one another but also a great place to express one’s opinion, thoughts, latest information, content etc. Similarly, DeCaprio's Instagram shows us how serious he is about his work and his concerns about the environmental issues that are taking place.
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio a very famous American actor, film producer and environmental activist, commonly known for his edgy and unconventional roles. Initially, he appeared in television commercials before entering movies. Leonardo is an Oscar award-winning actor who has proven his talent through his acting skills. DiCaprio achieved stardom very young in his career. DiCaprio influenced the public through his work in such a way that not only did they start following him but they want to inherit his strong thinking perspectives. DiCaprio’s career took off to the next level after he was a part of tragic love story Titanic, which further went to be a great success, at that time the Titanic was considered to be one of the most expensive films that were made, after the great success, there were numerous nominations and the film went on taking 11 Academy awards.
DiCaprio's outgoing personality, good looks, talent has led him to become a world-famous celebrity and influencer with a massive fan following in a very short span of time. DiCaprio’s great choices of films had gained him respect among the audience. People looked forward to watching his films to see what they would take back with them. He has encouraged the youth to take an active part to make this planet a better living place. DiCaprio uses social media as a platform to promote the greatest threat to humanity which is climate change. He used his public figure as his greatest advantage in spreading his thoughts and opinions about how our future will be affected because of our actions today. DiCaprio's passion for environmental issues has been expressed through his speeches and interviews which shows how passionate he is, his passion has been shown through his work he was also a part of the making of the documentary ‘Before the Flood’ which was based on climate change. DiCaprio had used this opportunity to spread awareness among people, claiming how sensitive this topic is and much attention is needed.
DiCaprio established his foundation LDF: Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation through donating funds from his own pocket to the foundation which is an environmental organization. This foundation supports and brings awareness to various environmental causes among the public. He has used this platform advocating the urgency and needs to act faster about the greatest threats that we are facing which are climate change. His foundation’s major contributions are: he donated 3 million in 2014, to stop a big issue that was about to take place and that was overfishing and also donate 3 million to Nepal to protect tigers. Most of LDF funding comes from DiCaprio himself. DiCaprio urges climate justice and supports on making this Earth beneficial for us.
Not only does DiCaprio use social media such as Instagram to promote his films, but he uses this platform to spread awareness among folks. His all recent posts on Instagram were related to the Amazon forest fires which took place recently in Brazil. Since 2014, when DeCaprio finally decided to join Instagram, he has a following of 34 million followers, every other post consists of a minimum of a million-plus like. Through this, it is not hard to imagine how much people take back from his post, how much knowledge they gained and it is shocking to see how much awareness he is able to spread with just one post.
Works cited
- Goldenberg, S. (2019). How Leonardo DiCaprio became one of the world's top climate change champions. [online] the Guardian. Available at https://www. theguardian. com/environment/2016/feb/29/how-leonardo-dicaprio-oscar-climate-change-campaigner[Accessed 26 Aug. 2019].
