Climate disinformation is an insidious, long-standing, and critical threat to climate action. It can be understood as the deliberate misrepresentation of climate science, data, impacts, mitigation efforts, and urgency.
Last week, ISD, CASM Technology, and the Climate Action Against Disinformation alliance (CAAD) released a report titled ‘Deny, Deceive, Delay: Documenting and Responding to Climate Disinformation at COP26 and Beyond’. The report attempts to quantify the issue of climate disinformation and offers strategies to mitigate the problem.
Through studying social media activity around COP26, the report identified four ‘discourses of delay’, i.e., narratives that discredit proposals for mitigation, adaptation, and transition. These include hypocrisy and elitism; absolutionism; unreliable renewables; and ineffective electric vehicles.
Analysis of the major communities responsible for climate disinformation showed right-wing groups from the US, UK, and Canada to be the largest and most vocal. The other major community was ‘anti-science’. Overlap was seen within this community and anti-vaccine and vaccine-sceptic groups as well as ‘anti-woke’ influencers.
The report offers seven policy asks, designed to detect, analyse, and counter climate disinformation. They aim to limit the spread of climate disinformation into public life, thereby minimising its impact on the passing of climate legislation.
1) a. Implement a unified definition of climate mis-and disinformation within key institutions (e.g. UNFCCC, IPCC, COP Presidency); and b. Reflect these criteria in tech company Community Standards and/or Terms of Service.
2) Enforce platform policies against repeat offender accounts.
3) Improve transparency and data access for vetted researchers and regulators on climate misinformation trends, as well as the role played by algorithmic amplification.
4) Limit media exemption loopholes within legislation (e.g. the EU Digital Services Act, UK Online Safety Bill and other proposals).
5) Restrict paid advertising and sponsored content from fossil fuel companies, known front groups for fossil fuel companies, and/or other actors repeatedly found to spread disinformation that contravenes the definition in Policy Ask 1.
6) Ensure better platform labelling on ‘missing context’ and the re-posting of old or recycled content.
7) Enable API image-based searches to support research on viral disinformation.