Just in time for the federal election, Protect Our Winters Canada (POWC) has created an online tool to combat climate change deniers on Twitter.
The two-week old campaign, called #FactBack, was aimed towards climate activists, during a critical period in Canadian politics, said POWC executive director David Erb.
“I think that people will be more politically in-tune when the election is going on,” he said. “There’s a greater likelihood of inaccurate information being shared and amplified during an election campaign, too. We wanted to make sure there was a counter to that.”
In order to target high-profile climate change deniers, #FactBack subscribes activists to email and text-message alerts, notifying users whenever disinformation about climate change is posted by a prominent Twitter user.
“We are monitoring a whole bunch of different politicians and other media sources who would often find themselves in a position where they are either sharing or could share inaccurate information on climate change,” said Erb.
When an inaccurate tweet is identified, it is vetted through a group of employees at POWC before a “fact library,” added Erb. The information is drawn from studies compiled by academic partners of the project, is curated for responders to choose from.
The scientists who are employed to compile the facts can change depending on the nature of the disinformation, said Daniel Scott, executive director of the Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change at the University of Waterloo and one of #FactBack’s academic partners.
“Once [POWC] discover something they think they should respond to,” he said, “they get in touch with us, and depending on which of us has got the most expertise in the area, we chime in with whatever information would work best.”
One of #FactBack’s most successful campaigns, launched on Oct. 4, targeted a tweet belonging to People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier.
“The level of climate hysteria keeps increasing,” Bernier wrote. “Some want a drastic reduction in consumption. Some call for a green fascist dictatorship. Some want to stop having babies. Now others want us to eat them. When will this madness stop?!”
A “fact avalanche” of #FactBack-subscriber replies was released soon after the tweet was put out, said Erb. As a result, Bernier removed the post.
“It really shows how Mr. Bernier and other political leaders could share information broadly through Twitter and other social media platforms without much accountability—until now,” he said.
“This is exactly why we developed this tool—to bury inaccurate information with science-based facts.”
However, as elections grow more heated, people are less likely to question information that aligns with their political beliefs, said Gordon Pennycook, professor of behavioural science at the University of Regina.
It is this antagonism, he said, that helps spread disinformation online.
“People share and believe false content because they don’t bother to think about it very much,” he said.
“When they see something that has an emotional appeal to them, they just pass it on or believe it automatically.”
Disinformation spread about climate change specifically, Pennycook added, is the largest factor in the existence of climate change deniers.
“In the context of climate change,” he said, “the water being muddied there has a huge impact on people’s opinion.”
“The only reason there’s anybody who disagrees with scientists is because there’s people that are saying other things against them.”
Elisabeth Labelle, a fourth-year journalism student at Concordia University and a #FactBack user, said the tool makes it much easier for her to pursue “activism in numbers” by compiling information that directly relates to the tweets she is responding to.
“There are people all over the place tweeting about how climate change isn’t real,” she said, “and using all sorts of statistics and numbers that aren’t really grounded in real science.”
“I thought the generator of tweets with studies was a great facilitator to respond to those people, and allows us—the people who believe climate change is real—to stick together.”
While #FactBack is useful for science-based topics such as climate change, Labelle added it is too early to tell if something similar would work for other types of inaccurate information, spread during election season.
“I’m not sure we can say yet if it should be used [against] other forms of disinformation,” she said, “but it definitely would not be a negative.”
“It’s about spreading information that is confirmed—to warn people who don’t necessarily do their own research that not everything they see is real, even if they agree with it.”
Feature image from file.
