Why is climate scepticism growing on Twitter?

Long before Elon Musk's takeover drew accusations of increased disinformation on the platform, there was already a rapid growth of climate scepticism and denial on Twitter, according to research by The IRIS Academic Research Group.

Their analysis studied climate discourse during the annual UN Climate Change Conferences (COPs), and found that criticism of climate action had grown from 1% of influential accounts during COP20 in 2014, to 16% of accounts during COP26.

Bertie spoke to two of the researchers, Professor Andrea Baronchelli and Dr. Max Falkenberg, to discuss this trend, and what might be driving it.

Futher reading: 

• Read the paper in Nature Climate Change
• Read Andrea and Max's commentary about the research on the LSE blog
• Read the IRIS blog about misinformation
• 'Climate-sceptic tweets surge after Musk’s Twitter takeover', The Times, 2/12/22

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