On this edition of Your Call's Media Roundtable, award-winning investigative journalist Rebecca Burns joins us to discuss her investigation "Against the Wind.” Burns details how a well-financed network of climate science deniers, right-wing think tanks, and fossil energy shills have intensified their disinformation campaigns against wind and solar.

Burns writes, "Now, from coastal hamlets in New York to rural farming towns in Ohio, residents supporting wind and solar in their communities are running up against the same barrier: a chorus of disinformation, much of it tied to, or even circulated directly by, fossil-fuel-backed groups waging an existential fight to preserve the status quo."

Inside the conspiracy to take down wind and solar power | KALW
https://www.kalw.org/show/your-call/2024-04-12/inside-the-conspiracy-to-take-down-wind-and-solar-power

#China

Low carbon plot: climate change skepticism with Chinese characteristics
Current sociological literature on climate change skepticism almost exclusively focuses on the discourses in the Western World. This paper seeks to broaden the scholarship by examining the Chinese case, and to bridge this body of literature with nationalism. Through critical discourse analysis of Chinese publications, I demonstrate the existence of an undercurrent of climate change skepticism in China. The main discursive patterns follow a conspiracy theory that sees climate change as a western plot to constrain China’s development space and to create a new site for financial accumulation. The result suggests that Chinese climate change skepticism stems from identity politics and mistrust towards Western countries. In China’s climate skepticism discourse, science also becomes a subject of national identity politics. This paper calls for a sociology of climate change ‘knowledge’ to move forward the study of climate change skepticism and denialism.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281197442_Low_carbon_plot_climate_change_skepticism_with_Chinese_characteristics

Proc v Cine chciplo klima-dezinformacni hnuti?

On Jan. 17, 2010, a highly popular — and provocative — television host named Larry Hsien Ping Lang devoted an entire episode of his current affairs talk show, Larry’s Eyes on Finance, to the “great swindle” of global warming. Lang, a University of Pennsylvania-educated economist who was once described as China’s version of Larry King, told his millions of viewers that the goal of Europe and the United States at the Copenhagen negotiations was to prevent China from being a global leader.

“The Western countries manufactured the climate myth without any scientific integrity,” and they have proceeded to “demonize and constrain China in the name of climate,” Lang said. Clips of the episode were viewed tens of millions of times on Youku, China’s YouTube.

Lang’s worldview seemed to resonate. “[The weather] is obviously getting colder and colder, but they are still lying through their teeth. These disgusting Westerners never stop trying to topple China,” argued one online commenter in response to Lang’s show. “These foreign bastards are so worried that China will rise and surpass the United States. Because they are jealous of China, they even made up lies about China … the scientists are all puppets controlled by politics,” read another. The commenter continued: “Copenhagen liars! American liars!”

Over the next year, more than a half-dozen books on the West’s climate conspiracy were published in China. Social media posts theorizing an American conspiracy proliferated.

Then something strange happened. After 2011, no more climate skeptic books were published. China’s state leaders stopped their skeptical statements, and the intense online discussions diminished. Just as it was gaining steam, the conspiracy theory seemed to disappear. And along with it, any public mention of climate change denial. As climate skeptics were gaining a steady foothold in U.S. politics, why did China’s suddenly vanish?

The Convenient Disappearance of Climate Change Denial in China – Foreign Policy
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/31/the-convenient-disappearance-of-climate-change-denial-in-china/

The Cultural Production of Climate Disinformation
A Social Network Analysis of the NIPCC

This master thesis in media and communication studies examines the production and dissemination of disinformation regarding climate change. Utilizing a synthesis of social network analysis, cultural industries, and disinformation studies. It is a study of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change and its production of texts. Arguing that this is a form of cultural production and should be studied as such. Conducting a social network analysis to illustrate the network structure behind the production and asking the question of how and why this is occurring. Exploring themes of post-truth, scientific realism, and conspiracy theories. The result of the study concludes that the NIPCC is producing and disseminating climate disinformation. Providing an outline of the process and chain of production. Further suggesting that it is financed by economic and political elites through a system of patronage as a means of protecting their interests. Lastly discussing the function production of disinformation serves as “corrupted infrastructures of meaning” supporting alternative epistemological realities.
Keywords
Disinformation, climate change, post-truth, social network analysis, The Cultural Industries, climate communication, NIPCC,

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1685766/FULLTEXT01.pdf

“The Great Reset” is a conspiracy theory that has become popular among people resisting public health recommendations related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The name comes from the 2021 theme of the World Economic Forum’s annual summit and claims that global elites have manipulated the course of the pandemic to implement various forms of economic and social control. While the conspiracy is easily debunked, we argue that it also reflects important cultural trends at the heart of the current epistemic crisis. Our study adopts a theoretical approach that frames conspiracy theories as cultural expressions of social problems. We conducted a qualitative analysis of media content shared on Twitter related to the nascent campaign #StopTheGreatReset. We found that Great Reset narratives not only relied on traditional conspiracy tropes but also reflected a newer and concerning anti-institutional discourse that expressed social anxiety about the pandemic as a form of antidemocratic politics.

The Great Reset and the Cultural Boundaries of Conspiracy Theory | Christensen | International Journal of Communication
https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/20128/4113

sikana konspiracni magoru donutila zmenit povolani televizniho meteorologa v US

The emails arrived relentlessly in Gloninger’s inbox for another month, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported. The sender accused the award-winning meteorologist, who spoke frequently about the effects of climate change, of being a conspiracy theorist and a “worthless Biden puppet.” Another told Gloninger to “go east and drown from the ice cap melting.”
Gloninger, the chief meteorologist at Des Moines news station KCCI, shared some of the messages on social media in July and said they had taken a toll on him.
“I’m trying to put it behind me,” Gloninger told The Washington Post. “But at the same point, I think it brings awareness to what journalists face day-to-day bringing the news.”
The episode ultimately led the meteorologist to a career-altering decision. Gloninger is departing KCCI and his career in TV news in July, he announced Wednesday, citing family health issues and post-traumatic stress he suffered after receiving the threats.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/06/22/meteorologist-climate-death-threat-iowa/

Spis o dezinformacich jako takovych nez o klimatu, ale vypada velmi zajimave

Artificially intelligent “bot” accounts bolster or berate politicians on Twitter. Conspiracy theorists publish junk news sites to promote their bunk. Campaigners create fake dating profiles to attract young voters. In Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives (May 19, 2020 publication date, Yale University Press), author Philip N. Howard delves into and exposes the technologies that jeopardize, in turn, our attention, our discourse, and our democracies.
Howard defines a lie machine as “a system of people and technologies that distribute false messages in the service of a political agenda.” Harnessing information garnered from polling data, internet postings, and interviews with journalists, bot writers, and political consultants, Howard offers a way to identify and derail these “lie machines.”
Full of riveting behind‑the‑scenes stories from the world’s biggest and most damagingly successful misinformation initiatives—including those used in Brexit and the U.S. presidential election—Howard not only shows how these campaigns have evolved from older propaganda operations but also gives new insight into why they are so effective at swaying public opinion.

Lie Machines – How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives
https://liemachines.org/

a o dalsich konspiracnich teoriich

It’s a peculiarity of our viral media ecosystem. One day, you’re trying to manage traffic jams in a mid-sized English city; the next you are the foot soldiers of an international conspiracy to lock people in their homes on the orders of the World Economic Forum.

At least, that’s what happened to local politicians in Oxford, England, after Oxfordshire County Councilor Duncan Enright explained to the Sunday Times in October how the university town of 160,000 would try to develop a “15-minute city” of “low-traffic neighborhoods”—assuring that most residents can access goods and services within a short walk or bike ride of home.

Pundits railed against these “tyrannical bureaucrats,” (Jordan Peterson) with their “insidious” and “evil” (Andrew Vobes) “climate change lockdowns,” (Nigel Farage) and “surveillance culture to make Pyongyang envious” (right-leaning news channel GBTV). Last week, a Tory MP asked for an inquiry into the “international socialist concept” on the floor of Parliament, noting that “15-minute cities will cost us our personal freedom.” The power of the English-language meme-o-sphere carried the 15-minute city conspiracy to Canada, Australia, and the United States, and it has flourished on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, prompting two separate debunkings from USA Today and one from Reuters.

15-minute city conspiracy theory: How Oxford's traffic plan inspired a global right-wing freakout.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/15-minute-city-oxford-conspiracy-theory-cars-lockdown-explained.html

TUHO: Twitter wasn’t designed to provide accurate info. Twitter is designed to maximize people’s attention and engagement. And how do you do that? You surface sensational, emotionally evocative content rather than surface deliberative rational information,” she said. “That’s not sexy, it’s all about the architecture.”

Earlier this week, a search for “climate” on Twitter resulted in “#ClimateScam” as the top term on the platform. Tweets using that hashtag were a miasma of climate disinformation, cherry-picked statistics and conspiracy theories. On another day, the top result was “climate lockdown,” a reference to the Great Reset conspiracy theory that claims a group of global elites is planning to shut down economic activity around the world to cut carbon emissions (Climatewire, Dec. 6).