Climate Change Confusion: Can We Stop the Spread of Misinformation?

Misinformation is a pervasive issue in Western society. These problems arise because people are expected to rely on accurate information to make well-reasoned and informed decisions about many aspects of their daily lives. For example, to make informed choices about what to eat or whether to purchase an electric vehicle, people need to understand the differences between the available options.

Misinformation in general has been described as a threat to many things, but climate change misinformation has been singled out by many experts as the largest threat that modern humans and wildlife have ever experienced.

As covered in more detail in the article The Origins of Climate Change Misinformation by Lark Scientific Researcher Jeremy Wright, modern climate change misinformation has only been around for about 75 years. And that seems like a long time, but it is a small blip compared to the geological age of the Earth and the length of climate cycles. In that short amount of time, the accumulation of greenhouse gases has caused immeasurable damage to human societies and ecosystems worldwide. And things will only get worse without swift climate action.

Managing the Threat of Climate Change Misinformation

Misinformation management strategies are referred to as misinformation interventions. According to the 4i FACT framework, there are 4 main types of misinformation interventions:

• Institutional (e.g., policy/legislation, journalistic standards), 

  
  

• Informational (e.g., fact-checking), 

  
  

• Individual (e.g., enhance climate change literacy),

  
  

• Interpersonal (e.g., community engagement). 

  
  

How are The 4 Interventions Applied? 

Interventions are used either before or after exposure to misinformation.

• Debunking is when corrections are made to inaccurate information after someone has already seen it. For example, fact-checking the claim that fossil fuels don’t harm the environment.

  
  

• Prebunking is when people are taught about misinformation before they see it. For example, teaching people how to identify climate change misinformation. 

  
  

Recent research shows that Prebunking strategies are more effective than Debunking because early interventions stop misinformation from spreading, instead of fixing any damage that has already been done. Some reasons for this difference include: 

• The Continued Influence Effect of Misinformation can reduce the effectiveness of Debunking because misinformation can still have an impact on someone’s beliefs even after receiving a correction. 

  
  

• The Illusory Truth Effect can also reduce the effect of Debunking by making someone start to believe a piece of misinformation is true, even when they know it is not.

  
  

• Prebunking helps develop the skills and knowledge to identify and reject misinformation.

  
  

• Prebunking is sometimes described as ‘inoculation’ because it prepares the mind to fight misinformation, similar to a vaccine that prepares the body to fight disease.

  
  

For more information on prebunking and debunking, see the full article Misinformation Interventions.

Climate change misinformation is a really big deal. As a result, businesses, governments, and academics have been working on debunking and prebunking techniques to help people form more accurate beliefs about climate change so we can all make more ecologically sustainable choices.

So, let’s all do our part to be sure that we hold accurate beliefs about climate science by listening to experts and following the facts!