Alt National Park Service

Last updated

Alt National Park Service
Named afterUS National Park Service
FormationJanuary 24, 2017;8 years ago (2017-01-24)
Website ourparks.org

The Alt National Park Service (AltNPS) is a coalition of progressive activists created in 2017 in response to restrictions on United States government agencies' social media activity imposed during the first presidency of Donald Trump. [1] [2] AltNPS is active on multiple social media platforms, including Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. [3]

Contents

Origin and growth

On January 20, 2017, the official Twitter account of the National Park Service (NPS) retweeted messages that appeared to criticize US President Donald Trump, who had been inaugurated earlier that day. [4] In response, the Trump administration ordered the Department of the Interior, which included NPS, to suspend all social media posting. Similar orders were given to other government agencies, including the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). [5] [6] Despite these orders, the official Twitter account for Badlands National Park posted several messages about climate change on January 24, which were subsequently deleted. [6] [7]

Later on January 24, a previously existing Twitter account called AltUSNatParkService (handle @AltNatParkSer) began tweeting criticisms of Trump and his administration, describing itself as "the Unofficial #Resistance team of U.S. National Park Service". [6] [7] [8] The account's handle was changed to @NotAltWorld on January 27. [8]

Following the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk and its subsequent rebranding as X, AltNPS announced on November 24, 2024, that it would no longer be posting to X, and that its "300+ members" were closing their personal X accounts. [9]

In a post to Facebook on February 25, 2025, AltNPS said it had 160,000 "coalition members". [2] [10]

Identity of participants

The Twitter account initially described itself as run by multiple NPS park rangers who needed to remain anonymous to avoid reprisals. However, AltNPS posted on January 26 that no US government employees were involved and that control of the account had been turned over to "several activists & journalists". [11] [12] The group's Facebook page says AltNPS was created by a "coalition" of employees from multiple federal and state agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, EPA, National Forest Service, USDA, and US Fish and Wildlife Service. [13] [14] Despite considerable speculation and investigation, the identities of who controls or posts on the account have not been proven; it is unclear whether any NPS rangers or other US government employees were involved in the creation of AltNPS. [1] [15]

Official logo of the National Park Service Logo of the United States National Park Service.svg
Official logo of the National Park Service

Initially AltNPS used the official NPS logo for its Twitter profile picture, but this was quickly abandoned due to concerns about legal liability. [12] A new logo announced on January 26, 2017, used a similar color palette and imagery to the official NPS one. An even more distinct logo, using entirely different colors and images, was adopted the next day. The logo currently used on the AltNPS social media accounts returns to images and colors similar to the official NPS logo. The silhouette of a bison used in the official logo is replaced by a howling wolf. Instead of the arrowhead design used for the overall shape of the NPS logo, the AltNPS logo resembles a raised fist – a symbol of political resistance historically used by multiple protest movements. [16] [17] [18]

References

  1. 1 2 Boerner, Jessica (Winter 2017). "A History of the National Park Service: Through the Lens of Legislation". DTTP, Documents to the People. 45 (4): 13. doi:10.5860/dttp.v45i4.6566.
  2. 1 2 Cross, Greta (February 26, 2025). "What Is the Alt National Park Service? What to Know about Group Protesting Trump Layoffs". USA Today . Archived from the original on June 18, 2025. Retrieved June 19, 2025.
  3. ↑ Sandlin, Jennifer (February 27, 2025). "Tools for the Resistance". Boing Boing . Archived from the original on March 18, 2025. Retrieved June 19, 2025.
  4. ↑ Bowerman, Mary (January 21, 2017). "National Park Service Regrets Harsh Retweets about Trump". USA Today . Archived from the original on March 15, 2025. Retrieved June 19, 2025.
  5. ↑ Dawson, Veronica R.; Bencherki, Nicolas (November 2022). "Federal Employees or Rogue Rangers: Sharing and Resisting Organizational Authority Through Twitter Communication Practices". Human Relations . 75 (11): 2092. doi:10.1177/00187267211032944.
  6. 1 2 3 Davis, Wynne (January 25, 2017). "Rogue National Park Accounts Emerge on Twitter Amid Social Media Gag Orders". NPR . Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved June 19, 2025.
  7. 1 2 Cresci, Elena (January 25, 2017). "National Park Service 'Goes Rogue' in Response to Trump Twitter Ban". The Guardian . Archived from the original on April 15, 2025. Retrieved June 20, 2025.
  8. 1 2 White, Kaila (January 27, 2017). "Rogue Tweets: A Guide to 'Alt' (Fake) Government Twitter Accounts in the Trump Era". AZCentral . Archived from the original on March 27, 2022. Retrieved June 19, 2025.
  9. ↑ Alt National Park Service (November 24, 2024). "We're officially joining the X exodus..." Facebook. Retrieved June 20, 2025.
  10. ↑ Alt National Park Service (February 25, 2025). "We get questioned a lot—we understand..." Facebook. Retrieved June 20, 2025.
  11. ↑ Dawson, Veronica R.; Bencherki, Nicolas (November 2022). "Federal Employees or Rogue Rangers: Sharing and Resisting Organizational Authority Through Twitter Communication Practices". Human Relations . 75 (11): 2110. doi:10.1177/00187267211032944.
  12. 1 2 Perez, Sarah (January 27, 2017). "Rogue National Park Service Twitter Account Says It's No Longer Run by Government Employees... but Maybe It Never Was". TechCrunch . Archived from the original on August 20, 2017. Retrieved June 19, 2025.
  13. ↑ Ladino, Jennifer K. (2019). Memorials Matter: Emotion, Environment, and Public Memory at American Historical Sites. University of Nevada Press. pp. 262–263. ISBN   978-1-943859-98-6.
  14. ↑ Alt National Park Service. "About Alt National Park Service". Facebook.
  15. ↑ Dawson, Veronica R.; Bencherki, Nicolas (November 2022). "Federal Employees or Rogue Rangers: Sharing and Resisting Organizational Authority Through Twitter Communication Practices". Human Relations . 75 (11): 2110–2112. doi:10.1177/00187267211032944.
  16. ↑ Dawson, Veronica R.; Bencherki, Nicolas (November 2022). "Federal Employees or Rogue Rangers: Sharing and Resisting Organizational Authority Through Twitter Communication Practices". Human Relations . 75 (11): 2103–2105. doi:10.1177/00187267211032944.
  17. ↑ Pezzullo, Phaedra C.; Cox, Robert (2018). Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere (5th ed.). Sage. p. 230. ISBN   978-1-5063-6359-2.
  18. ↑ Moran, Rachel E.; Billard, Thomas J. (2020). "Imagining Resistance to Trump Through the Networked Branding of the National Park Service". In Jenkins, Henry; Peters-Lazaro, Gabriel; Shresthova, Sangita (eds.). Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Social Change. NYU Press. pp. 231–240. ISBN   978-1-4798-9125-2. JSTOR   j.ctv1jk0j2f.29.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.