Hear ye, hear ye! Climate Misinformation and the Future of Business
Purpose Talks
The Impacts of Misinformation
Misinformation has a lot of different impacts. It can make people believe wrong things or reduce their belief in accurate things. Misinformation polarizes, by which i mean it has different effects on different parts of the population. When misinformation washes over society, it splits people apart and even more polarized. Even if we do a good job in communicating our science, all those efforts can be undone by misinformation.
In our LAST episode of the season, we talk to 3 change-makers about climate misinformation and what it means for business leaders.
Stop Funding Heat, a climate campaign group, said 2021 was the worst year yet for climate misinformation spreading on Facebook with a 70.6% rise in engagement on posts containing false information about the environment. They also claimed that only 3.6% of content flagged as climate misinformation is fact-checked. In this episode, we tackle how consumers and businesses are affected by this and how we need to recognize climate misinformation as one of the biggest barriers to halting the climate emergency.
We spoke to an academic, a journalist and an advertising professional who explained the history of climate misinformation, what it is, how it spreads, how advertising and journalism play a role and how leaders can positively engage with it.
We chat with:
John Cook - Post Doc Research Fellow at the Climate Change Communication Research Hub
John is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University. His research focus is on using critical thinking to build resilience against misinformation. In 2007, he founded Skeptical Science, a website that won the 2011 Australia Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge. In 2020, he published the book Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change applying critical thinking, inoculation research, and cartoons to engage and educate readers about climate misinformation. He recently released the Cranky Uncle game, combining critical thinking, cartoons, and gamification to build players’ resilience against misinformation. He currently works with organizations like Facebook and NASA to develop evidence-based responses to climate misinformation.
Harriet Kingaby - Co Chair of the Conscious Advertising Network
Harriet is an activist, working at the intersection of advertising, AI and misinformation. Her role at Media Bounty focuses on insight gathering and climate misinformation across a range of groundbreaking clients and projects from electric vehicles to green finance. She co-founded The Conscious Advertising Network with Jake Dubbins of Media Bounty in 2018 and has since seen it gain international recognition, work with the UN, and grow to over 150 members from O2 to Accenture Interactive. She’s a former Mozilla Fellow, working with Consumers International to map the opportunities and impacts of AI enhanced advertising, globally.
Lina Yassin - Operations Manager at Climate Tracker
Lina is a Sudanese climate journalist. She is a Master student in environmental change and management at the University of Oxford. Lina also works as the Operations Manager at Climate Tracker, where she implements capacity-building programs for environmental journalists from all over the world. Climate Tracker believes in the power of journalism, but recognizes that many young journalists don’t have the training, resources or support to identify and tell the climate stories they want to. They also recognise that this challenge is often greatest in the countries hardest hit by climate change.
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Have thoughts or feedback about the show? Don’t be a stranger! Email me at izzy@businessofpurpose.com
Tools and resources:
- https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/disinformation-playbook
- https://consciousadnetwork.medium.com/open-letter-global-action-required-now-to-tackle-the-threat-of-climate-misinformation-and-7064278b5b77
- General misinformation on COP26: https://twitter.com/patrickgaley/status/1456603743651254277?s=20
- The coal agreement: https://twitter.com/AdamJSchwarz/status/1460288680153829383?s=20
- https://skepticalscience.com/
- https://crankyuncle.com/book/
- https://crankyuncle.com/game/
Stats, stories and insights mentioned:
- https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/11/05/cop26-staggering-scale-of-climate-misinformation-on-facebook-revealed-in-new-report
- https://www.bbc.com/news/59147659
- https://www.npr.org/2021/11/12/1054850363/cop26-climate-summit-misinformation?utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_term=nprnews
The episode is the brainchild of TrendWatching and Business of Purpose. It was produced, written and hosted by Izzy Ahrbeck and edited by the brilliant Terence Moore. The music is by The Other Steve. Podcast artwork by Zuzanna Loch and Nikki Ritmeijer.
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