Netroots Nation 2022 — Day One — Featured Panel: Solving the Climate Crisis Starts with Combating Misinformation

Com­bat­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion and mis­in­for­ma­tion starts with track­ing where it is being spread and how far it’s reach­ing. That is the goal of Phil Newell and Alli­son Fish­er, two of Thurs­day after­noon’s pan­elists, at Media Mat­ters.

Fish­er used high gas prices attrib­uted sole­ly to Joe Biden as an exam­ple of how effec­tive far-right dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns can be. Although social media was the focus of the pan­el, Fish­er high­light­ed the role all forms of media play in spread­ing these nar­ra­tives. Tele­vi­sion, radio, and pod­casts often work to ampli­fy mis­in­for­ma­tion on social media and cre­ate buzz­words or memes. For exam­ple, what Tuck­er Carl­son says on air often becomes online mis­in­for­ma­tion quick­ly after.

Fish­er also not­ed that the most effec­tive dis­in­for­ma­tion con­nects to a sto­ry already estab­lished by bad actors. Gas prices were added to the idea that we need to keep our econ­o­my based on fos­sil fuels and that renew­able ener­gy pro­grams cause price increas­es.

This tac­tic is cou­pled with rep­e­ti­tion, which increas­es belief in false state­ments. The right is par­tic­u­lar­ly adept in this area. Zero­ing in on a nar­ra­tive or a lie, right-wing media often focus­es on a hand­ful of key talk­ing points, cre­at­ing buzz­words that can be used lat­er to imme­di­ate­ly illic­it anger or frus­tra­tion. Some exam­ples include the Key­stone pipeline, the Green New Deal, and cli­mate activist Gre­ta Thun­berg. Fish­er high­light­ed that the Green New Deal has become a catch-all for any cli­mate-relat­ed, or not-so-relat­ed, issue.

Both Fish­er and Newell dis­cussed the issue of data voids and how they con­tribute to the spread of mis­in­for­ma­tion. Data voids describe the lack of reli­able media sources chal­leng­ing lies and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. This results in false nar­ra­tives pol­lut­ing pub­lic dis­course on cli­mate issues. Instead of let­ting the right car­ry these con­ver­sa­tions, the left needs to push back and open a con­ver­sa­tion about renew­able ener­gy and how it can lead to ener­gy inde­pen­dence.

Michael Khoo, chair of the Cli­mate Dis­in­for­ma­tion Coali­tion, focused his pre­sen­ta­tion on hold­ing social media out­lets and Big Tech respon­si­ble for the dam­age they have caused.

After Texas’ pow­er grid failed, leav­ing 4.5 mil­lion homes and busi­ness­es with­out pow­er, cli­mate mis­in­for­ma­tion regard­ing the issue spread quick­ly. Most notably, a pic­ture of a frozen wind­mill was post­ed to Twit­ter, lat­er being fea­tured on Fox News and retweet­ed by many com­men­ta­tors on the right. Khoo sights this as a clas­sic cycle: the oil indus­try cre­ates a cli­mate cri­sis and then blames the cri­sis on renew­ables. The biggest prob­lem with this pic­ture though is the real­i­ty that it was not tak­en in Texas. Even after this fact was proven, Face­book was unwill­ing to address the issue or take any blame for the mis­in­for­ma­tion on their plat­forms. Instead, when the Cli­mate Dis­in­for­ma­tion Coali­tion addressed the issue, Face­book was quick to blame its users for lack­ing media lit­er­a­cy. Khoo was quick to push back on this, not­ing that dis­in­for­ma­tion is designed to ampli­fy and con­sumers of this infor­ma­tion are also vic­tims.

The cli­mate coali­tion’s core the­o­ry is that “cli­mate dis­in­for­ma­tion on social media has giv­en cli­mate denial a new lease on life and pre­vents cli­mate action.” For this rea­son, they focus on hold­ing Big Tech account­able and trans­paren­cy from tech agen­cies. Khoo said that Big Tech should be reg­u­lat­ed like any oth­er indus­try, using exam­ples like the account­abil­i­ty car man­u­fac­tur­ers are required to take if one of their prod­ucts mal­func­tions and injures some­one.

This point was high­light­ed by all four pan­elists, par­tic­u­lar­ly using the exam­ple of a law­suit in the late 1990s against a tobac­co com­pa­ny. The tobac­co com­pa­ny ulti­mate­ly lost the law­suit regard­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion because of the dam­age that mis­in­for­ma­tion had on their con­sumer base. Pan­elist Shel­don White­house, US Sen­a­tor from Rhode Island, con­clud­ed by say­ing, “You can eas­i­ly take this com­plaint and replace tobac­co with hydro­car­bon.” Sen­a­tor White­house also said that pro­gres­sives need to pres­sure the Biden admin­is­tra­tion and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice to do exact­ly that by research­ing and inquir­ing about sev­er­al state law­suits that are mak­ing sim­i­lar claims.