Weekly post: Climate misinformation
What the data tells us about the state of climate misinformation on social media platforms
In addition to the Charts of the Week roundup, this newsletter features a weekly deep dive data storytelling post on a specific topic from a member of the community. The second edition of the weekly post comes from our Data Journalist Intern, Emily Irion, a graduate student at UCSD’s School of Global Policy & Strategy. You can follow her on OpenAxis and Twitter. As always, each visualization has a backlink to remix the chart and explore the dataset with tools for collaboration and crowdsourcing insights!
Earth Day is always a prime opportunity for companies to signal to their customers that they care about the environment. Last week was no different; Twitter announced in a blog post that they are banning misleading advertisements on climate change. "We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis." This is a welcome change, however, TBD on how their newest owner will implement this policy change.
Why This Matters
According to data collected by Climate Monitor, between March 16 and the 21st of this year, more than seven million people were exposed to climate disinformation tweets. Keep in mind, this is an everyday occurrence on social media platforms, with estimates of 818,000 - 1.36 million daily views of climate misinformation on Facebook as well.
Other top tweets besides those highlighted in the chart above, between March 16-21st, included:
"People who want to have children and refuse to be sterilized will be ostracized for failing to prevent the climate crisis" (1,700 retweets)
"We can’t broker a peace agreement between the Ukraine and Russia because clueless liberals are preaching to Russians on climate and other 'woke policies'" (1,300 retweets)
Maybe you're thinking that's not so bad, it’s just what happens on Twitter. However, Climate mis- and disinformation are a barrier to climate action. For the first time, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cited misinformation as a threat, and as the report outlined, society does not have time to delay its climate response. Social media companies are under a lot of pressure to change their content moderation policies to stop the spread of misinformation. Last year a similar content policy was announced by Google and Facebook. However, a recent report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate analyzed “184 articles featuring climate denial content” on Facebook. Their findings indicate the social network behemoth, claiming over 2.8 billion monthly active users, is failing to label about half of the climate disinformation content on its platform.
The Toxic Ten
The Center for Countering Digital Hate has identified ten key actors responsible for publishing 69% of climate change denial online.
It’s no secret that social media platforms and their algorithms foster the perfect environment for spreading harmful misinformation. Research shows that sensational and false content travels faster online, and the recent Facebook leak revealed how hateful advertisements are cheaper to run. The “Toxic Ten”, as outlined in the chart above, are able to capitalize on these seemingly endogenous factors to spread their toxic messages. Twitter asserted “climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter.” In addition, social media platforms should not be subsidizing any misinformation for more clicks.
There are many actors, outside of social media companies, who benefit from climate change denial, namely the oil and gas industry. They recently had their second hearing in front of the House Oversight Committee to discuss their role in climate disinformation. But climate change denialism is becoming a harder narrative to push, and the general public’s views on climate change are shifting for the better.
Changing Landscape
This shift in the American public’s beliefs on climate change are forcing the oil and gas industry to change tactics. Some are more insidious than others, like using Instagram influencers to promote the ostensibly innocuous hashtag #cookingwithgas. A more common one is “Greenwashing,” where companies use terminology like #cleanenergy to appear more environmentally friendly. This strategy is arguably misleading, but some environmental activists believe it is illegal and are suing oil companies. The newest, and more dangerous tactic, being adopted by many groups around the world is “environmental populism” or “Green-cloaked nativism.” This combines fear mongering tactics with environmentalism to promote nationalistic and anti-immigration viewpoints.
The next few years will be critical in the fight against climate disaster; and at this point, the true scale and impact of social media platforms spreading climate disinformation is unknown. So while policymakers struggle over social media regulation, and the twitterverse argues over what Elon Musk means by “free speech,” consumers should ask ourselves what role do we play in this.