Market Research

Potential problems to solve

80% of people claim to be concerned about climate change. However, delve deeper and one finds that people have a remarkable tendency to define this concern in ways that keep it as far away as possible. They describe climate change as a global problem (but not a local one) as a future problem (not one for their own lifetimes) and absolve themselves of responsibility for either causing the problem or solving it.

60% of people believe that "many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change". Thirty per cent of people believe climate change is "largely down to natural causes", while 7% refuse to accept the climate is changing at all.

It is hardly surprising that political world view is by far the greatest determinant of attitudes to climate change, especially in the US where three times more Republicans than Democrats believe that "too much fuss is made about global warming".

Instead of focusing on denialism, climate misinformation is getting local, focused on extreme weather events tied to a changing climate — such the Texas storm or recent wildfires that ravaged California and Australia.

Research into misinformation in other areas has found it can cause individuals to have emotional responses, such as panic, suspicion, fear, worry and anger, as well as highlight that these responses, in turn, may have an impact on decisions and actions taken. There are concerns about misinformation being a threat at a societal level, particularly for democracies.

As well as neutralizing the influence of misinformation, another benefit of inoculation is that inoculated recipients are more likely to discuss the issue—a phenomenon referred to as post-inoculation talk (Ivanov et al., 2015). This is a desired outcome with the issue of climate change which is hampered by the conundrum of “climate silence”. While most Americans are alarmed or concerned about climate change, they fail to talk about the issue with family or friends (Maibach et al., 2016). One of the mechanisms driving self-censoring about climate change is the fear of looking incompetent (Geiger and Swim, 2016). Inoculation may mitigate climate silence by providing people with explanations of denialist arguments.

An estimated 21.8 million UK adults have been misinformed about the climate crisis on social media in the past month alone.

Approximately 14% of press releases opposing climate action or denying the science behind climate change received major national news coverage, she found, compared to about 7% of press releases with pro-climate action messages.

What type of climate misinformation is there?

It's not real
It's not our fault
It's too uncertain
It's not urgent
It's about jobs

Who creates climate misinformation?

Major fossil fuel companies routinely make billion-dollar profits, extracting and distributing oil, gas, and coal.

Unfortunately, fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide (CO2) when burnt—and CO2 is the main driver of climate change. Instead of acknowledging the harmful effects of their products and committing to swift and deep reductions in global warming emissions, many of the world's largest fossil fuel companies have knowingly deceived the public about the climate science and policy—and they continue to do so today.

One academic study of 192 sceptic books and reports found that 92% were directly associated with right wing free market think tanks. It concluded that the denial of climate change had been deliberately constructed "as a tactic of an elite-driven counter-movement designed to combat environmentalism".

How is climate misinformation spread?

Even today, industry trade groups and associations spread disinformation on climate change, while corporate lobbyists influence politicians and regulators—all with the financial backing and support of major fossil fuel companies.

For example, it was revealed that Koch Industries, a little-known, privately owned US oil company, paid nearly $50 million to climate denial groups and individuals between 1997 and 2008.

The conservative news media, continues to provide a platform for the handful of scientists who reject the scientific consensus. Of the 18 experts that appeared in Channel 4's notorious sceptic documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, 11 have been quoted in the past two years in the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, five of them more than five times.

Media intelligence firm Zignal Labs analyzed millions of social media posts, news stories and other online content and found that overall, conversations about climate change in the past 12 months peaked during high-profile natural disasters, including the Texas storm and the California wildfires. Overall, online mentions of natural disasters and their relationship to climate change also increased by 27%, Zignal found.

During the bushfires in Australia last year, bots and trolls spread false posts on Facebook claiming that arson by environmental campaigners was to blame, the report states.

Misleading claims by US conservative pundits, saying that frozen wind turbines were causing mass power outages in Texas in February, were shared on Facebook without fact-checking labels.

Together with social norms and the observation that people tend to trust information from people in their social network, this can lead to “echo chambers” where information and misinformation echoes around a particular group. In turn, this can lead to polarisation, where communities can form around sharply contrasting positions on an issue.

Researchers also categorized the 885,164 tweets those users had sent about climate change during the two-month study period. The most popular categories were tweets about climate research and news.

Marlow and the other researchers determined that nearly 9.5% of the users in their sample were likely bots. But those bots accounted for 25% of the total tweets about climate change on most days.

But they suspect the seemingly fake accounts could have been created by “fossil-fuel companies, petro-states or their surrogates,” all of which have a vested interest in preventing or delaying action on climate change.

How to counter it?

Structurally, inoculations consist of two elements—warning of the threat of misinformation (Banas & Richards, 2017) and counter-arguments refuting the myth.

In order to effectively refute misinformation, researchers have assembled a collection of recommended best-practices (Cook & Lewandowsky, 2011; Swire & Ecker, 2018). For example, an effective refutation requires a factual replacement that meets the causal explanations initially supplied by the refuted misinformation (Ecker et al., 2015). A refutation that mentions the myth being debunked should also warn recipients before mentioning the myth to ensure they are cognitively on guard and less likely to be influenced by the mention of the myth (Ecker et al., 2010). Refutations perceived to threaten a person’s worldview are likely to be ineffective or counterproductive (Nyhan & Reifler, 2010; Prasad et al., 2009), so communication strategies are likely to be more effective if targeting audiences without ideological filters. Lastly, graphical information is more effective than text in reducing misperceptions (Nyhan & Reifler, 2018).

The questionnaire began by presenting a Facebook status update denying climate change and asked participants to rate their reaction, their likelihood of responding, and to write a sample response that they might post. Next, the questionnaire presented one of three comments on the initial post: either “correction,” “collaboration,” or a control response. The control response was a neutral statement that did not address the topic of climate change. The correction response stated that climate change “…is a very real issue. The overall temperature of the planet is rising, resulting in climate change.” The collaboration response said, “Whether you believe in global warming or think it is a lie, I hope we can all agree that we should do whatever it takes to reduce pollution. Clean air and water are good for everyone.” The participants then provided their reaction to the comment, their likelihood of posting a response, and the content of their likely response. The authors identified common themes and trends in the participants’ reactions towards the post and comments, as well as the tone and content of their responses.

The results show that liberal individuals were more likely to react with frustration to the initial post, but most participants were not likely to respond. The content of the initial responses was mostly information-oriented, regardless of agreement or disagreement. All participants, regardless of political orientation, were significantly more likely to react favorably and respond after the “collaboration” comment compared with the “correction” comment.