'It's time to stop giving these people visibility, which can be easily spun into false authority'
in 2018, researchers looked at how information from climate deniers is spread. It found climate denying groups Watts Up With That and the Global Warming Policy Forum"makes use of social media affordances to craft the appearance of legitimacy" and that they manipulate scientific information and circulate it to"shape environmental discourse practices."
In the new research, Petersen and colleagues looked at 386 prominent climate deniers and 386 climate scientists. They looked at 200,000 scientific journals and 100,000 media articles—from both traditional and new formats. Their findings showed climate change deniers were 49 percent more visible to audiences than climate change scientists. Where media sources adhere to traditional editorial standards, the visibility of the two groups was on par.
The team says a legitimate counterpoint to a climate scientist would be another scientist with similar expertise. Giving oil lobbyists or politicians with an agenda equal air time is not balance, they say."It's well known now that a well-financed propaganda campaign on behalf of conservative fossil fuel interests led mainstream media to frame reporting on climate change science as political reporting rather than science reporting," Westerling said.
Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, who was not involved in the research, said the study shows there is a growing trend towards"customized media" that is helping spread disinformation."This study is a wake-up call for all media to do better," she said in the statement,"to check their sources in order to accurately communicate the reality of human-induced climate change, the relevance of its impacts and the urgency of action.
Scientists warn climate change deniers are being given the same amount of legitimacy as scientists and this helps the spread of misinformation.
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