Speaker 1: Welcome back to DRILL. I'm Amy Westervelt, and over the
Speaker 1: next couple months, I'm prepping to go to my very
Speaker 1: first COP. That stands for Conference of the Parties. It's
Speaker 1: an annual UN climate summit that brings together all the
Speaker 1: countries that are parties to the UN Framework Convention on
Speaker 1: Climate Change or unf Triple C. It's true I've been
Speaker 1: a climate reporter for more than twenty years and have
Speaker 1: somehow managed to avoid going to COP all this time.
Speaker 1: I'm going this year because it relates to a couple
Speaker 1: of projects we're working on for next year, and because
Speaker 1: the organizing committee from Brazil has vowed to make climate
Speaker 1: information integrity a focus of this year's gathering. That's important because,
Speaker 1: as we'll learn today, climate miss and disinformation is a
Speaker 1: huge part of the reason the world has not acted
Speaker 1: on this issue. I'm also curious to get a front
Speaker 1: row seat because there's a real crisis of legitimacy happening
Speaker 1: with the COPS. This year is COP thirty. That means
Speaker 1: they've been happening for thirty years, and we don't seem
Speaker 1: any closer to a global solution to climate change than
Speaker 1: we were thirty years ago. I'm also interested to see
Speaker 1: what happens when one of the world's biggest obstructors, the
Speaker 1: United States, decides not to go. Who will pick up
Speaker 1: the slack? Will it be Saudi, Yes, but also Japan,
Speaker 1: even Europe. A lot of negotiators are heading into cop
Speaker 1: wanting to protect their countries, resources, their countries' approach to markets,
Speaker 1: all of those things. So it will be interesting to
Speaker 1: see what happens up close. And to get ready, I'm
Speaker 1: reading this new book from the Climate Social Science Network
Speaker 1: that pulls together everything we currently know about climate instruction
Speaker 1: all over the world. It's great prep for this conference.
Speaker 1: I'm joined today by two researchers who look at how
Speaker 1: misinformation functions, why it's so effective, and what can be
Speaker 1: done to combat it. John Cook is a Senior Research
Speaker 1: Fellow with the Melbourne Center for Behavior Change at the
Speaker 1: University of Melbourne, researching how to use critical thinking to
Speaker 1: counter misinformation. You might have seen his research referenced in
Speaker 1: the past around the idea of paltering, a misinformation technique
Speaker 1: that the oil companies love, where you use accurate bits
Speaker 1: of information assembled in such a way that they mislead people.
Speaker 1: Also joining us is Dominic Stecula. He's an assistant professor
Speaker 1: of political science at Colorado State University whose research focuses
Speaker 1: on the information environment and its effects on society. We
Speaker 1: talked about all sorts of things, from the rule ideology, polarization,
Speaker 1: and social media play in misinformation to concepts like solutions, aversion,
Speaker 1: and elite cues. That's coming up after this quick break.
Speaker 1: This is Drilled Season fourteen obstruction.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you guys get asked this one hundred times
Speaker 2: a week, but I'm asky to do it again. Can
Speaker 2: I have you define the difference between misinformation and disinformation?
Speaker 2: And I think you make this really interesting point about
Speaker 2: the fact that intentionality maybe doesn't matter so much here,
Speaker 2: so I'd love to hear you say more about that
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: In this literature on misinformation and disinformation, a lot of
Speaker 3: attention has been paid to intentionality, right, And the basic
Speaker 3: definition of misinformation is a false or misleading content that's
Speaker 3: shared without any intent to deceive, whereas disinformation is shared
Speaker 3: with intent to deceive. But what we say in the
Speaker 3: chapter is that on climate and really often in most
Speaker 3: other things, intent is unknowable, right. Sometimes you get to
Speaker 3: know the intent through the release of private correspondence of
Speaker 3: a certain cable network, for example, right, But in general,
Speaker 3: intent is unknowable, and the same claim like volcanoes emit
Speaker 3: more co two than humans, misleads audiences regardless of whether
Speaker 3: the person sharing it wants to deceive or doesn't. So
Speaker 3: we think that it's better to focus on what these
Speaker 3: claims do, and what they do is they erode understanding
Speaker 3: and ultimately stall any meaningful climate action.
Speaker 4: And I would just add to that that when people
Speaker 4: believe misinformation, they will often make arguments that look exactly
Speaker 4: the same from the outside, using the same misleading techniques
Speaker 4: as people who are intentionally trying to deceive. And the
Speaker 4: reason for that is because when we are motivated to
Speaker 4: believe something, we gravitate towards these different biases. And for example,
Speaker 4: we might be biased towards believing certain types of information,
Speaker 4: and that leads us to cherry pick data, So just
Speaker 4: pick the bits of information that suit our beliefs and
Speaker 4: ignore all the information that contradicts our beliefs. So someone
Speaker 4: might be cherry picking because they're biased, or they might
Speaker 4: be cherry picking because they're intentionally trying to deceive people
Speaker 4: you don't know from the outside self deception looks exactly
Speaker 4: the same as intentional deception from the outside.
Speaker 2: Right. Interesting, Okay, Can I have you find the elaboration
Speaker 2: likelihood model of attitude change and talk about how it
Speaker 2: shows up when we're talking about climate misinformation.
Speaker 3: So it's a big theory in psychology and communications, and
Speaker 3: the gist of it is that we tend to process
Speaker 3: messages in different ways. Sometimes it's via central route and
Speaker 3: that's the careful evaluation, and we do that when we're
Speaker 3: motivated and able to really evaluate a claim or the messages.
Speaker 3: This processed through the peripheral route, so things like shortcuts
Speaker 3: like you know, using a specific source, a vibe, quote unquote,
Speaker 3: an identity, and we do that when we have limited
Speaker 3: time or ability to really process and evaluate the claim.
Speaker 3: Since climate is a very complex issue, most people tend
Speaker 3: to lean on the ladder, on the peripheral route, on
Speaker 3: the shortcuts they don't really have have frequently the ability
Speaker 3: and sometimes time to really process carefully the claims. But
Speaker 3: that's how ELM really pops up in the context of
Speaker 3: climate misinformation because we tend to rely on this peripheral route,
Speaker 3: on these shortcuts that we take mental shortcuts like who's
Speaker 3: saying things, what's the vibe, the identity behind the speaker,
Speaker 3: the identity that's triggered by the thing that's claimed. So
Speaker 3: that's really the kind of the underlying basis for how
Speaker 3: this pops up in the broader context of climate misinformation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had never seen this before and it was
Speaker 2: really really interesting for me, so appreciate it.
Speaker 3: It's similar to some of the kind of Danny Kanama
Speaker 3: and the kind of thinking fast and slow, kind of
Speaker 3: cognitive you know, system one, system two thinking. It's it's
Speaker 3: a similar similar idea, But yeah, that's that's kind of
Speaker 3: I think how I would it's there's obviously more to
Speaker 3: it than this, but that's how I would. I would
Speaker 3: kind of characterize where it fits in the context of
Speaker 3: what we're talking about, right, And a broad idea is that,
Speaker 3: let's say, a twenty second clip from a politician you
Speaker 3: trust can outweigh an eight hundred word explainer because the
Speaker 3: clip hits this peripheral route, right, the identity, the emotion,
Speaker 3: whereas the explainer demands a lot more cognitive effort that
Speaker 3: you might not have.
Speaker 4: And a lot of misinformation arguments are superficially persuasive, They
Speaker 4: just flow. They might have a logical fallacy, but they
Speaker 4: just have a kind of a fly to it that
Speaker 4: that sounds kind of truthy to people. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, public opinion comes up a lot in this and
Speaker 2: obviously one of the key, maybe the key uses of
Speaker 2: misinformation is to shape public opinion. But i'd love to
Speaker 2: have you actually define what that means for people and
Speaker 2: then talk a little bit about how climate misinformation works
Speaker 2: to sort of shape public opinion in one direction or another.
Speaker 2: You mentioned this bottom up and top down approaches in
Speaker 2: the paper too, and it'd be great to have you
Speaker 2: explain what that is.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, with public opinion, it can cover a couple
Speaker 4: of different things. Like one of the obvious things is
Speaker 4: people's perceptions about climate change. Do they think that climate
Speaker 4: change is happening and human cause and that the impacts
Speaker 4: will be bad? And we talked more specifically about those
Speaker 4: beliefs later in the chapter. But it also extends to
Speaker 4: people's attitudes about climate action. Do they support policies to
Speaker 4: mitigate climate change? Do they support renewable energy? And so
Speaker 4: there's that whole mix of perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes, and
Speaker 4: misinformation has several aims. It's about using people's perceptions about
Speaker 4: climate change, but ultimately it's about reducing public support for
Speaker 4: climate action.
Speaker 3: I'll just add maybe more and more just broader kind
Speaker 3: of meta as a as a political scientist, you know,
Speaker 3: public opinion is this really important feature of you know,
Speaker 3: democratics theory, right, and what we think of as what
Speaker 3: makes democratic society actually democratic. Right, And the idea is
Speaker 3: that this kind of aggregation of what people think and
Speaker 3: want should be reflected in what the politicians do and
Speaker 3: the policies that the government ends up pursuing.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: So though in many ways public opinion in theory at
Speaker 3: least should be the driver the push or stall of policy,
Speaker 3: and in the context of climate change, it definitely can
Speaker 3: stall it as well. So misinformation in that context kind
Speaker 3: of tilts that playing field because it makes action harder
Speaker 3: even when majorities support and believe in climate change and
Speaker 3: support certain kinds of climate action. As we've seen in
Speaker 3: a lot of polling in the United States but also
Speaker 3: in other countries in terms of the bottom up versus
Speaker 3: top down movements and pushing on public opinion. The idea
Speaker 3: is that you know, in terms of bottom up, everyday
Speaker 3: average people can share things they believe or you know,
Speaker 3: they wrongly believed in terms of misinformed claims, and because
Speaker 3: of how we structure our time and the kind of
Speaker 3: virtual spaces in which we tend to spend a lot
Speaker 3: of our time at using you know, social media, et cetera,
Speaker 3: that bottom up pressure. You know, viral claims that are
Speaker 3: misinformed impact public opinion, right when when unchecked, misinformation spreading
Speaker 3: on social media can really do a lot of damage.
Speaker 3: So that's the bottom bottom up component. The top down
Speaker 3: component is the elites, you know, and by elites I
Speaker 3: mean I mean here politicians, interest groups of all kinds,
Speaker 3: including the fossil fuel industry. They can see certain narratives
Speaker 3: and influence the public. Public then public then repeats those claims.
Speaker 3: So the top down bottom up dynamic is mutually reinforcing.
Speaker 3: In many ways, they reinforce each other, right, Like a
Speaker 3: lot of the claims that one unquote organically show up
Speaker 3: on social media have been supplied by elites, by interest groups.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: So, for example, in the context of climate misinformation, you
Speaker 3: can have a meme about evs being dirtier than gascar,
Speaker 3: and that might spread on social media and it may
Speaker 3: appear to be something that's organic that that people are
Speaker 3: just sharing among themselves.
Speaker 5: But where did that come from? Where did it originate?
Speaker 3: Well, frequently those types of tidbits, those types of misinformed,
Speaker 3: misinformed content, they originate with the lobbying group, with a
Speaker 3: specific interest group that has a vested interest in spreading
Speaker 3: a certain narrative. So in that sense that the kind
Speaker 3: of bottom up and top down influences of public opinion
Speaker 3: are mutually reinforcing because one feeds into another, and then
Speaker 3: that pushes public opinion into into places that is maybe
Speaker 3: less than ideal because it is based on information that
Speaker 3: is not truthful, not correct, and ultimately deceiving.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you talk about the the fact that Americans
Speaker 2: aligned with the Republican Party are more skeptical now of
Speaker 2: climate science than they were in the nineteen nineties, and
Speaker 2: kind of use that as a jumping off point to
Speaker 2: talk about the role that ideology plays and shaping climate opinions,
Speaker 2: and then you know how climate misinformation kind of plays
Speaker 2: into that. So I'd love to have you talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about ideology and just the role that it
Speaker 2: plays in climate misinformation, which I realized you could probably
Speaker 2: spend two hours plus plus, but I don't know. I guess, yeah,
Speaker 2: how does it work and why is it such an
Speaker 2: indicator of how effective climate misinformation will be.
Speaker 4: In the psychology field, we talk about the concept of
Speaker 4: solutions a version, which is the idea that when people
Speaker 4: don't lack a proposed solution to a problem, then they're
Speaker 4: more likely to deny that as a problem in the
Speaker 4: first place, and we see this with climate change. Political
Speaker 4: conservatives often done let I lack some of the They
Speaker 4: often proposed solutions to climate change, such as regulating fossil
Speaker 4: fuels and trying to reduce emissions in that way, and
Speaker 4: so rather than coming up with their own free market
Speaker 4: solutions to climate change, instead, unfortunately they deny the problem
Speaker 4: needs solving. And so this is really the main driver
Speaker 4: of why political ideology shapes people's climate opinions. And really,
Speaker 4: back in the early nineteen nineties, we were at this
Speaker 4: crossroad where the problem of climate change was becoming more real,
Speaker 4: like the scientists were becoming clear on the need to
Speaker 4: act on climate change, and conservative groups really had this
Speaker 4: option where they could have either proposed conservative solutions to
Speaker 4: climate change or denied the problem. And it's a real
Speaker 4: historic tragedy that instead the conservative think tanks opted to
Speaker 4: deny the problem and produce misinformation, and ever since then
Speaker 4: misinformation has been polluting the information landscape and polarizing the public.
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally agree with everything John said.
Speaker 3: I mean, a few things I would add is that
Speaker 3: when we think of ideology, most people, at least in
Speaker 3: the United States, they are not consistently liberal or conservative
Speaker 3: right people kind of views that are all over the place.
Speaker 3: But increasingly, in a polarized political landscape like ours, the
Speaker 3: society is sorting along those partisan minds more and more
Speaker 3: so than ever before. Historically, when you knew the fact
Speaker 3: that somebody is a liberal or conservative, you know, forty
Speaker 3: fifty years ago, that didn't really predict your ability to
Speaker 3: guess whether they're a Democrat or Republican, right, because there
Speaker 3: were liberals and conservatives in both parties. There were south
Speaker 3: and racist Democrats, and there were northern kind of liberal
Speaker 3: Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller.
Speaker 5: To a certain extent that no longer exists.
Speaker 3: Right, the ideology and partisanship are sorted in a sense
Speaker 3: that if I now know that somebody identifies as a conservative,
Speaker 3: I have a pretty good guess that they also are
Speaker 3: a Republican.
Speaker 5: And say, with liberals and Democrats.
Speaker 3: And Essentially, ideology matters for climate views because artisanship and
Speaker 3: partisan polarization that kind of drives a lot of our
Speaker 3: politics these days. Climate is one of the issues on
Speaker 3: which parties have polarized. And that simply means that if
Speaker 3: you want to be a member of good standing of
Speaker 3: the Republican Party, you know that you need to be
Speaker 3: against climate action, right, you need to be opposed to know,
Speaker 3: socialist leftists who want to implement certain policies. I'm obviously
Speaker 3: using air quotes here, which is not very useful tools
Speaker 3: for radio. That you know, that's that's that's an access
Speaker 3: of major division in society now in the United States,
Speaker 3: and and that essentially translates to this tribal way of
Speaker 3: thinking about climate because you know what's expected of people
Speaker 3: in your political tribe to believe, so any kind of
Speaker 3: thoughtful engagement with any kind of facts, et cetera, that
Speaker 3: comes second to that.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: When something becomes more of an identity than just a
Speaker 3: belief about a specific thing, it's much harder to change
Speaker 3: that right because it is part of a package of
Speaker 3: things that you choose to identify as So ideology in
Speaker 3: that context is also.
Speaker 5: Proubling for climate views.
Speaker 3: In the context of polarized American politics because ideology and
Speaker 3: partisanship are very tight together now and it's one of
Speaker 3: those divisive things where there's a lot less room for
Speaker 3: actual thoughtful debate now because it's one of those issues
Speaker 3: in which the public is polarized, and you just know
Speaker 3: that if you're left or right, that's the view you're
Speaker 3: supposed to have.
Speaker 5: End of discussion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, can you define for me elite cues and
Speaker 2: tell me about how they shape public opinion on climate change?
Speaker 5: What are these things?
Speaker 3: I can say a few things since published under but
Speaker 3: essentially cues coming from trusted leaders, And in the context
Speaker 3: of climate change, we mostly mean leaders like politicians. And
Speaker 3: you know, in given that American politics is so polarized
Speaker 3: and politics is an important part of how people kind
Speaker 3: of see themselves, messages coming from major political figures carry right.
Speaker 3: They're important because politics is important. But it doesn't just
Speaker 3: mean politicians. It also means other trusted societal for the
Speaker 3: lack of a better word, influencers, right like religious leaders, celebrities, etc.
Speaker 3: The elite queues would essentially be messages that come from
Speaker 3: trusted opinion sources that have the power to sway public opinion.
Speaker 3: They matter in the context of what we're talking about
Speaker 3: here because they not only can influence how your own
Speaker 3: team thinks about something, but they can also influence how
Speaker 3: the other team thinks. So one example being The Inconvenient
Speaker 3: Truth the movie and al Gore being a main messenger
Speaker 3: when climate change really became a very salient issue in
Speaker 3: the early two thousands. Al Gore was a trusted opinion
Speaker 3: leader for a lot of Democrats as a presidential candidate
Speaker 3: and a former two term vice president. But what we
Speaker 3: might now forget is that he was also a very
Speaker 3: disliked figure on the right. His assessment on among Republicans
Speaker 3: in the United States was as negative as Hillary Clintons
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen, for example, right, he was a very
Speaker 3: polarizing figure. And the reason why I bring him up
Speaker 3: is that because he was the messenger, he obviously moved
Speaker 3: Democrats in a pro climate direction because he was a
Speaker 3: trusted leader on their side, but because he was so
Speaker 3: hated by the other side, he also moved Republicans in
Speaker 3: the other direction, just because the kind of the logic
Speaker 3: is if the person that you really hate says something,
Speaker 3: then you're just gonna almost by default to the opposite right.
Speaker 3: And that's the power of elite cues in the sense
Speaker 3: that they can move, they can move your team, but
Speaker 3: they can also do some damage by if you're choosing
Speaker 3: the wrong messenger, it can really backfire in a sense
Speaker 3: of making people really skeptical of what the content of
Speaker 3: the message is because the messenger is so distrusted and
Speaker 3: so dislike.
Speaker 4: And I'll just add to that, A couple of studies
Speaker 4: have looked at what drives public opinion about climate change,
Speaker 4: looking at all the different factors such as economic factors
Speaker 4: and an elite cues, and they found that elite cues
Speaker 4: are one of the biggest drivers of public opinion about
Speaker 4: climate change, which really understoodes that people are travel as
Speaker 4: Dominique was saying earlier, and so when out tribal leaders
Speaker 4: giving us these cues in a certain direction, people tend
Speaker 4: to follow that.
Speaker 2: I actually was just listening earlier today to like old
Speaker 2: c Span tape of the head of the r n
Speaker 2: C at the time during the Gore Bush election, like
Speaker 2: laying into decre who she was actually you know, Bruce
Speaker 2: Harrison's wife too, which is like a whole weird connection
Speaker 2: in and of itself. And not a coincidence. I'm sure, Okay,
Speaker 2: So I want to talk about the news media again.
Speaker 2: I feel like this each of these topics could like
Speaker 2: be you know, the whole long discussion in and of themselves,
Speaker 2: but in broad strokes, what role does the news media
Speaker 2: play in shaping public opinion, especially on climate and what
Speaker 2: has it done to kind of either amplify or try
Speaker 2: to correct misinformation.
Speaker 4: So the media have in some cases helped amplifile spread
Speaker 4: climate misinformation, and sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's unintentional. Conservative
Speaker 4: media outlets have been a particularly as time has gone on,
Speaker 4: they've gotten worse at it, have been quite a productive
Speaker 4: source of climate misinformation, and so that's more of an
Speaker 4: intentional misleading the public kind of source. But you also
Speaker 4: have unintentional misinforming, such as when just mainstream media present
Speaker 4: climate change as a false balance where they give both
Speaker 4: sides of an issue equal weight, which is entirely appropriate
Speaker 4: when it's issues of political opinion or policy, but when
Speaker 4: it comes to issues where there's a scientific consensus, then
Speaker 4: presenting like a fifty to fifty debate between a scientist
Speaker 4: and a climate denier just has a misinforming effect. So
Speaker 4: I mean, we were talking at the beginning about misinformation
Speaker 4: and disinformation and how difficult it is to the difference
Speaker 4: between the two. We see that with how media have
Speaker 4: covered climate change too, whether it's intentional or not. There
Speaker 4: are these different ways of misinforming the public.
Speaker 5: Yet the false balance that Jones referring to the norm
Speaker 5: in a lot of newsrooms.
Speaker 3: And the profound fear of being seen as biased, leads
Speaker 3: to certain types of coverage that that, like John highlighted.
Speaker 5: Is not ideal in the context of a scientific issue.
Speaker 3: I think that the problem with a lot of the
Speaker 3: of the media, including non partisan media. So I'm not
Speaker 3: even talking now about certain cable news networks or explicity
Speaker 3: partisan sources of information, but just your run of the
Speaker 3: mill mainstream news sources outside of even just the false balance,
Speaker 3: which which is wrong and should be avoided. What has
Speaker 3: happened is that increasingly, as the public has alarized on
Speaker 3: this issue, the issue is presented more as a political
Speaker 3: one than a scientific one. I've done a big study
Speaker 3: with content analysis of climate change coverage, looking at decades
Speaker 3: of climate change and global warming news in American media
Speaker 3: starting in the nineties and going going into twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: And what has happened is experts are futured prominently, which
Speaker 3: is good, but increasingly they share the space with politicians,
Speaker 3: and a lot of coverage includes references and quotes from politicians,
Speaker 3: and the moment politicians kind of crowd out the experts.
Speaker 3: To people on the receiving end, to the news consumers,
Speaker 3: it just becomes a partisan issue and not a scientific issue.
Speaker 3: So in that sense, it isn't just a false balance
Speaker 3: of all. We need to present this issue in a
Speaker 3: quote unquote balanced and fair way.
Speaker 5: We don't want to be called, you know, partisan hacks.
Speaker 3: So we're going to have a pro climate change and
Speaker 3: an anti climate change person on. Even beyond that, the
Speaker 3: sheer fact that the volume of politicians in the climate
Speaker 3: change coverage has helped to polarize the public and make
Speaker 3: it an issue where to be a good member, to
Speaker 3: be a member in good standing of the of a
Speaker 3: certain political party, you need to have a specific political
Speaker 3: position on that issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've been a reporter for a long time and
Speaker 2: I keep seeing this in amongst a lot of climate
Speaker 2: reporters right now, especially like I don't know, like I
Speaker 2: feel like, at least in the US, people have moved
Speaker 2: away somewhat from the false equivalence thing. But there's this
Speaker 2: kind of archetype of a reporter who I think thinks
Speaker 2: that makes them seem smarter if they are like more
Speaker 2: open to industry talking points, you know, like it makes
Speaker 2: them I don't.
Speaker 4: Know, I don't know. Anyway, it's academia as well.
Speaker 1: Oh great, great, amazing.
Speaker 2: I find it very annoying. Okay, So, actually you mentioned academia,
Speaker 2: and I know that's not a specific focus in this chapter,
Speaker 2: but kind of tying into elite cues and some of
Speaker 2: the news media staff in general too, I wonder how
Speaker 2: much kind of using academics, especially at really elite universities
Speaker 2: helps with pushing climate misinformation to various publics as well.
Speaker 2: How important is like that messenger for these guys.
Speaker 4: That's an interesting question. So from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty,
Speaker 4: I was based at George my University in Virginia.
Speaker 1: Belly of the Beast, John exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you know you've got to change from within, right,
Speaker 4: That was That's the thin. And so George Mason has
Speaker 4: really ground zero for where the Koch brothers have tried
Speaker 4: to spread their influence through academia and universities. So the
Speaker 4: Coke Brothers are basically the fossil fuel industry, like the
Speaker 4: incredibly rich, incredibly influential, and playing a very impressive long
Speaker 4: game in terms of influencing much just public opinion, but
Speaker 4: influencing universities and thought and then and then that going
Speaker 4: on to influence elites, political elites and the public as well.
Speaker 4: So so, and this has been a strategy going over decades,
Speaker 4: and it's been quite effective in terms of influencing the
Speaker 4: public towards their not only their political beliefs, it also
Speaker 4: casting down on climate change.
Speaker 3: And I would add to it the growing strain of
Speaker 3: populace as we document in a chapter we have the
Speaker 3: whole case study of Brazil, but in general, just populism
Speaker 3: and anti intellectualism essentially means that increasingly even experts themselves
Speaker 3: are not a very trusted group for a certain segment
Speaker 3: of the population. So when we talk about elite queues,
Speaker 3: you know, the academic expert Q might be useful for
Speaker 3: a lot of people, but for some it might be
Speaker 3: a polarizing one because they view academics, researchers as as
Speaker 3: the out as the outgroup, right, they view them as
Speaker 3: the enemy. So Why on earth would would you trust
Speaker 3: somebody who who is who is an outgroup and who
Speaker 3: doesn't have your and your country's best interests in heart?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: Which is I mean like Vice President Jadi Vance literally
Speaker 5: said that professors are the enemy. Right. So, so in
Speaker 5: that sense, that makes messaging.
Speaker 2: Harvard guy calls Harvard.
Speaker 1: Guys exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So it is a very tricky landscape now, right, because
Speaker 3: in that sense, even even expertise alone and credentials are
Speaker 3: being challenged in order to sew doubt and divide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know. I was reading this and I
Speaker 2: sent him a snippet of it to my husband because
Speaker 2: my sister in law is like this. She is like
Speaker 2: super anti any kind of like expert. I don't know,
Speaker 2: any kind of experts. People with advanced degrees she calls.
Speaker 2: She refers to them as educationalists.
Speaker 5: So she would not be a huge, huge kind of
Speaker 5: me and John. Okay, I avoid Amy's sister amazing.
Speaker 1: It's really like.
Speaker 2: Some of the stuff that she says, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 2: where's this coming from?
Speaker 1: Mostly Facebook is the answer.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, So.
Speaker 2: Actually that's something that that you highlight in this chapter too.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think like we all know that
Speaker 2: it's gotten worse with social media, but can you talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about just how much worse and how
Speaker 2: quickly and and maybe even like I don't know, I
Speaker 2: feel like you get at this in a couple of
Speaker 2: different ways in the chapter. But it's not just that
Speaker 2: social media has changed, you know, the infrastructure for information
Speaker 2: to move, but it's also changed like how people think
Speaker 2: about information and how they I don't know, like how
Speaker 2: maybe how susceptible they are to climate misinformation. So what
Speaker 2: are some of the key things to look out for there?
Speaker 3: So, I mean social media is important because it is
Speaker 3: where most people get their information and spend a lot
Speaker 3: of their time. Now, you know, traditional media still matters,
Speaker 3: So not to say that people that you know, people
Speaker 3: don't want cable or don't want evening news or don't
Speaker 3: read the newspaper, but their power is waiting considerably. And
Speaker 3: what we have instead is, you know, this very fragmented
Speaker 3: information landscape that includes all kinds of forms of delivering information.
Speaker 3: I mean, podcasts are big now, right and some of
Speaker 3: the most important ways in which people get informed now
Speaker 3: and one that's growing in important and our podcasts and
Speaker 3: you know that's when we see people like Joe Rogan
Speaker 3: who have tremendous power and sway over people, not just
Speaker 3: in the United States but all over the world.
Speaker 4: And we have.
Speaker 3: Social media where you know, people get to interact and
Speaker 3: see things in real time, and it's becoming very difficult
Speaker 3: to consume news in a way. As a news consumer,
Speaker 3: your essentially your job has gotten a lot harder over
Speaker 3: the years because if you just wanted to get reliable
Speaker 3: information twenty thirty years ago, you could just subscribe to
Speaker 3: a newspaper, maybe a magazine, right, you would listen to
Speaker 3: to like NPR or something. You had a few sources
Speaker 3: that you know, all adhere to journalistic principles and delivered
Speaker 3: for the most part, pretty pretty healthy information diet to you. Now,
Speaker 3: to curate that space for you is incredibly difficult because
Speaker 3: on social media, the burden falls on you to make
Speaker 3: a timeline on Facebook or on Twitter now x on TikTok,
Speaker 3: to control what you see and to create a space
Speaker 3: for you for yourself that is full of content that
Speaker 3: is coming from professionals who you trust, their kind of
Speaker 3: information gathering strategies, etc. Right, it's just very difficult for
Speaker 3: you to do, even if you want to be responsible
Speaker 3: news consumers. It is a very tremendously difficult thing to do.
Speaker 3: And even if you try to spend time doing this,
Speaker 3: a lot of what you see isn't just what you
Speaker 3: want to see, right, It's not just the account that
Speaker 3: you follow. A lot of it is algorithmically driven. The
Speaker 3: algorithm is a black box, and it's serving you content
Speaker 3: that is not necessarily having your best interest in mind.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: So, I think social media are best understood in that
Speaker 3: space as a place where misinformation can spread very very
Speaker 3: fast and unchecked and can do a lot of damage
Speaker 3: before anybody can really do anything about it. And that's
Speaker 3: assuming they want to do something about it, which you
Speaker 3: know now what we know about major social media companies.
Speaker 3: With Donald Trump in again in the White House, they're
Speaker 3: previously held positions of trying to fact check and maybe
Speaker 3: halt the spread of misinformation. Those commitments are no longer there, right.
Speaker 3: So it is very difficult, I think, for you as
Speaker 3: a news consumer to just operate out in the world
Speaker 3: right now, because it's very time consuming. It's very difficult
Speaker 3: to curate a space for yourself, and it's really it's
Speaker 3: really hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it really is.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: I am I had an intern this summer, very smart
Speaker 2: young woman, pretty savvy news consumer, wanted to work for
Speaker 2: a climate news organization, and like, in our first conversation,
Speaker 2: she told me that she exclusively gets her news from
Speaker 2: this one newsletter on substack, And I looked up the
Speaker 2: guy who does it, and he's just he's like a
Speaker 2: policy and pr guy. Not She's like, yeah, some he
Speaker 2: like often gets news stories out even before you know,
Speaker 2: the major newspapers. And they said, well, yeah, because he's
Speaker 2: not doing any reporting or fact checking, so it's pretty fast.
Speaker 5: Worse could have been some guy on TikTok, right, I
Speaker 5: could have been I know.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's not even like, oh you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know like doma un educated people are getting their
Speaker 2: news that way, but everybody, like everybody is really doing it.
Speaker 1: John, I know you've like you know, worked with these
Speaker 1: companies and stuff too.
Speaker 2: So curious to hear your thoughts as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it feels like a lifetime ago now, But I
Speaker 4: did do some work with Facebook on fact checking climate
Speaker 4: misinformation back when they cared about that, So I think
Speaker 4: the people I worked with are the longer even there,
Speaker 4: or at least that whole department seems to have been disappeared,
Speaker 4: But what we were doing was like, well, the impression
Speaker 4: I got from working with Facebook was that they were
Speaker 4: concerned about the perception that they were allowing this information
Speaker 4: to spread on their platform, and so they were being
Speaker 4: pushed in these different directions. There was like conservative politicians
Speaker 4: that were bullying Zuckerberg in public hearings about censoring climate misinformation,
Speaker 4: as they put it, and then there was a lot
Speaker 4: of people criticizing them for letting this information spread. So
Speaker 4: they were trying to thread this path of least controversy,
Speaker 4: which I thought was interesting. And one way that they
Speaker 4: tried to manage it was by publishing what they call
Speaker 4: the Climate Change Information Center. I haven't even checked to
Speaker 4: see whether it's still online now, and the idea there
Speaker 4: was promote facts about climate change, but also they were
Speaker 4: debunking some climate myths, and myself and a few other
Speaker 4: scientists who work on debunking were helping them write those.
Speaker 4: So it was an interesting experience. It was good that
Speaker 4: they were at least trying something, and we were constantly
Speaker 4: pressuring them to try to go further. But what I
Speaker 4: learned from that is that these corporations are not a
Speaker 4: single money with, but there's lots of forces within them,
Speaker 4: all tugging in different directions, and so that made after
Speaker 4: it was a case of two steps forward, one step back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to have you walk me through this
Speaker 1: typology of disinformation susceptible publics. I found this really useful
Speaker 1: to this way of thinking about the different groups of people.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Could I have you rattle that off please?
Speaker 4: Yeah. So the typology is really a spectrum. So at
Speaker 4: one end of the spectrum, you have people who are
Speaker 4: immune to climate misinformation. So if they hear some misinformation
Speaker 4: on Twitter or x or wherever, they'll you know, they'll
Speaker 4: see it for what it is. And these people tend
Speaker 4: to be fairly knowledgeable about climate change so that they
Speaker 4: are less prone to being misled. Then along the spectrum
Speaker 4: you have people who are vulnerable to misinformation and people
Speaker 4: who are receptive. These are the two groups in the middle,
Speaker 4: and this is most people. So these people are less
Speaker 4: knowledgeable about climate change and more susceptible to being persuaded
Speaker 4: by misinformation. And then at the other end of the
Speaker 4: spectrum you have disinformation amplifiers. So these people are small
Speaker 4: in number, but they're often the loudest voices. So they
Speaker 4: have a disproportionate influence. So you have at the end
Speaker 4: of the spectrum the people who are more knowledgeable in
Speaker 4: one way or the other. But then in the middle
Speaker 4: you have the people who are less knowledgeable and tend
Speaker 4: to be more vulnerable. And the consequence of all the
Speaker 4: usefulness of having this kind of typology is it can
Speaker 4: help inform communication strategies and often it's about actressing the
Speaker 4: people in the middle who are vulnerable, helping them building
Speaker 4: their climate literacy or building their critical thinking and their
Speaker 4: immunity against misinformation.
Speaker 3: I would add just one thing because it ties into
Speaker 3: the previous question about social media. But like John said,
Speaker 3: most people are not the amplifiers, but we frequently.
Speaker 5: Have this perception that they are.
Speaker 3: And it's partly because of those people frequently are the
Speaker 3: ones who have mastered the social media and what gets
Speaker 3: rewarded by the algorithm and what doesn't. And you know,
Speaker 3: I also say vaccine hesitancy because I'm a massachist apparently,
Speaker 3: and this is really something that.
Speaker 5: We see in that space as well.
Speaker 3: You know that those amplifiers, those highly motivated, very extreme,
Speaker 3: these folks, they're just very loud voices of a small
Speaker 3: minority but they tend to take over the conversation because
Speaker 3: of how our information environment looks, And I think it's
Speaker 3: really useful to take the step back and think of
Speaker 3: the other people in the spectrum.
Speaker 5: As John mentioned, that's a lot more people are there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you mentioned these five key beliefs about climate
Speaker 2: change that surveys have pinpointed, and conversely, these like five
Speaker 2: mirror images around misinformation. Can I have you lay those
Speaker 2: out as well? What are these kind of key believes them?
Speaker 2: They are opposites that we're seeing.
Speaker 4: So the five key beliefs about climate change were originally
Speaker 4: developed by Ed Maybeck, who happened to be my boss
Speaker 4: when I was based at George Mason University, and he
Speaker 4: did a lot of psychological research into how people think
Speaker 4: about climate change and found that through his survey work,
Speaker 4: he identified these five key beliefs and he sums them
Speaker 4: up very piply in just ten words. It's real, it's us,
Speaker 4: it's bad. Experts agree, there's hope. So it's about it's
Speaker 4: about believing that climate change is real, it's happening, humans
Speaker 4: are causing it, the impacts will be bad. The climate scientists,
Speaker 4: the experts agree on these scientific points, but there is
Speaker 4: hope that we can solve climate change. And again, like
Speaker 4: what Ed Maybach does is based on these five beliefs.
Speaker 4: It helps inform communication strategies and you can design fairly
Speaker 4: simple messages to just boost these five beliefs. I've noticed
Speaker 4: that since we wrote this chapter and submitted it, Ed
Speaker 4: Maybach has updated it now Now he calls them six
Speaker 4: key truths about climate change, and the sixth edition is
Speaker 4: people agree or something like that, because there's a common
Speaker 4: misconception that people don't aren't concerned about climate change, whereas
Speaker 4: in reality, the majority of the public in the US
Speaker 4: and globally are concerned. They are on board about climate change,
Speaker 4: mirroring what both Dominice and I were saying earlier that
Speaker 4: the disinformation amplifies us a tiny minority. They're like about
Speaker 4: ten percent of the US public, whereas more than half
Speaker 4: of the US public are concerned or alarmed about climate change.
Speaker 4: So that's the that's I guess what it is identified
Speaker 4: as another important truth or perception.
Speaker 1: Yes, I found this so interesting in your research that
Speaker 1: because the amplifiers are allowed, and because there's this belief
Speaker 1: that no one else cares, it has a silencing effect.
Speaker 1: On people who otherwise might talk more about climate I've
Speaker 1: seen this happen with media too. It has an effect
Speaker 1: there as well, where if people call in or email newsrooms,
Speaker 1: a lot of times the head of the newsroom thinks
Speaker 1: that that means, okay, there must be ten, twenty fifty,
Speaker 1: even one hundred other people who feel this way and
Speaker 1: just didn't take the initiative to reach out. So it
Speaker 1: really has a big impact on how stuff gets covered
Speaker 1: because they take that as being a signal from the audience.
Speaker 4: And yeah, that's a really important dynamic and one of
Speaker 4: those more subversive impacts of misinformation. We kind of think
Speaker 4: of misinformation's main impact is that it just causes people
Speaker 4: to believe wrong things, but it can have a range
Speaker 4: of impacts, such as reducing trust in scientists or institutions.
Speaker 4: And this is one of the bigger ones is this misconception,
Speaker 4: which psychologists call pluralistic ignorance, the fact that we're ignorant
Speaker 4: that people concerned about climate change are the majority. And
Speaker 4: when we have this misconception of pluralistic ignorance, it has
Speaker 4: a silencing effect, which causes this spiral of silence where
Speaker 4: no one's hearing anyone else talk about it, so we
Speaker 4: all tend to stay silent. And the real world implication
Speaker 4: of that is that it reduces the social momentum that
Speaker 4: we need to get climate action and that's quite a
Speaker 4: damaging impact.
Speaker 1: Climate change misinformation has shifted in the last ten years
Speaker 1: or so. What would you say are the four major
Speaker 1: arguments found in climate misinformation today?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, some colleagues that I worked with based in
Speaker 4: the UK and Ireland, we developed an AI model to
Speaker 4: track climate misinformation arguments and built a twenty year history
Speaker 4: of what are the ebbs and flows of climate misinformation
Speaker 4: and we found this long term, twenty year trend where
Speaker 4: misinformation was gradually transitioning away from the science denial and
Speaker 4: more towards attacking climate solutions. And so we see that
Speaker 4: climate solutions misinformation is really the future of what climates
Speaker 4: information is going to be increasingly focused on. And that's
Speaker 4: what the discourses of delay are. So those are the
Speaker 4: arguments designed to delay climate action. And the four main
Speaker 4: arguments that we identify in the chapter is firstly that
Speaker 4: overall argument that climate change can't be solved, that it's
Speaker 4: the opposite of the there's hope climate by saying there's
Speaker 4: no then there's emphasizing the downsides of climate action. So
Speaker 4: that's and we hear this argument not only in climate change,
Speaker 4: but also we heard a lot during the pandemic, actually
Speaker 4: the argument that the cure is worse than the problem.
Speaker 4: But major argument we identified was redirecting responsibility for climate
Speaker 4: change to others. And I think that fossil fuel industry
Speaker 4: have actually done a really clever effective job in trying
Speaker 4: to shift the blame for climate change away from themselves
Speaker 4: to individuals, saying, you, as an individual, have to solve
Speaker 4: climate change. And not many people know that the first
Speaker 4: carbon footprint calculators were funded by the fossil fuel industry.
Speaker 4: Now we're trying to get us thinking about our individual
Speaker 4: carbon footprint so that we weren't thinking about trying to
Speaker 4: transition away from fossil fuels.
Speaker 3: Right, it's a fossil fuel company saying, you know, we're
Speaker 3: planting trees while they're lobbying against emission rules.
Speaker 5: Right, what are you doing?
Speaker 4: Right? Yeah, And that's really the fourth argument we identify
Speaker 4: in the chapter, which is advocating solutions that really don't
Speaker 4: answer the main thing that we needed, such as like
Speaker 4: we you know, we do need to reduce our individual footprint,
Speaker 4: but that's only going to get us a tiny part
Speaker 4: of the way. The real solution is transforming the way
Speaker 4: we get our energy, and so I think another example
Speaker 4: of that is promoting gas, meat, and gas as a
Speaker 4: bridge to renewables. That's just another way of delaying the action,
Speaker 4: kicking the can further down the road. And the fact
Speaker 4: that it's called natural gas, like that's how they brand themselves,
Speaker 4: is just another form of greenwashing. It's a way of
Speaker 4: making them portraying themselves as this natural, cleaner form of
Speaker 4: energy when it's still just a fossil fuel.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Can I have you explain what the FLICK framework
Speaker 1: is and how we can use it to understand climate misinformation.
Speaker 4: So FLICK comes out of the logical research into how
Speaker 4: do we build public resilience against misinformation, And one of
Speaker 4: the ways to do that is by inoculating people by
Speaker 4: explaining the techniques used to mislead. Once people understand the
Speaker 4: logical fallacies and the misleading rhetorical techniques in misinformation, they're
Speaker 4: less likely to be misled. So FLICK was developed as
Speaker 4: a as a framework for just helping people remember the
Speaker 4: misleading techniques they stand for fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations,
Speaker 4: cherry picking, and conspiracy theories, which are five of the
Speaker 4: main denial techniques not used used not just in climate
Speaker 4: change but across all areas of science. Dominique mentioned being
Speaker 4: a masochist and working on vaccine as idency, we see
Speaker 4: the flick techniques. Yeah, we see those techniques in vaccine misinformation,
Speaker 4: just the same as climate.
Speaker 1: Missf I mean, it definitely seems like the erosion of
Speaker 1: trust and experts and science that happened as a result
Speaker 1: of decades of climate misinformation set us up for a
Speaker 1: lot of the mis info that we saw during the pandemic.
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely, Like climate misinformation has been happening for decades
Speaker 4: since the early ninety nineties, and it's just been creating
Speaker 4: this fertile ground for building distrust of scientific institutions and
Speaker 4: not just climate scientists, but science more generally. So when
Speaker 4: we came around to the pandemic, the playbook was there.
Speaker 4: Like what happened over like a six to twelve month
Speaker 4: period during the pandemic was like a compressed version of
Speaker 4: the last few decades of climate misinformation, using all the
Speaker 4: same techniques. Even the same people were involved, Like climate
Speaker 4: deniers were also then promoting vaccine misinformation. So it's all
Speaker 4: cut from the same clock.
Speaker 1: We kind of talked about this silencing effect already, but
Speaker 1: I want to have you talk about it a little
Speaker 1: bit more. You know, any other kinds of silencing that
Speaker 1: happen when I guess when yeah, when people are curing
Speaker 1: all these misleading messages, you know, thinking that everyone else
Speaker 1: doesn't really care, all those kinds of things. What are
Speaker 1: the other kind of society wide impacts.
Speaker 4: Well, another thing we talk about in the chapter that
Speaker 4: we haven't covered yet in this conversation is the silencing
Speaker 4: or the chilling effect it might have on the scientific community.
Speaker 4: So scientists are humans too, surprise, surprise. And when people
Speaker 4: when a community is being bombarded with stereotype attacks, then
Speaker 4: just even without themselves realizing it, they tend to behave
Speaker 4: in a way that tries to avoid that stereotype. So
Speaker 4: when climate scientists are being attacked for being alarmists, then
Speaker 4: they tend to downplay the alarming results in their scientific
Speaker 4: research to avoid that exception of being an alarmist. And
Speaker 4: so there's been studies that have found that climate scientists
Speaker 4: tend to err on the side of leash drama trying
Speaker 4: to downplay the more alarming results in their research.
Speaker 5: And there's a fair amount of aspect that many people
Speaker 5: experience as well.
Speaker 3: You mentioned they need the people who would call in,
Speaker 3: you know, they write, They write emails too, they send
Speaker 3: physical mail. I personally have gotten things, mostly in relation
Speaker 3: to my work on vaccine hesidency. I think vaccine like
Speaker 3: vaccine dent, anti vaxer folks tend to be very motivated
Speaker 3: and they really push back. But I've heard stories from
Speaker 3: from from colleagues working in the climate space as well,
Speaker 3: So it frequently also means actual harassment, which isn't very pleasant.
Speaker 3: But going back to your initial original question, it isn't
Speaker 3: just misleading people, right. It then reshapes institutions. So like
Speaker 3: John said that it will reshape the institution of science
Speaker 3: because maybe scientists will speak differently, or maybe they'll they
Speaker 3: won't engage in public as much with their work as
Speaker 3: they would have done otherwise. It reshapes institutions and policy
Speaker 3: because it enables you know, greenwashing and all these other
Speaker 3: things that John mentioned in the previous answer. So I
Speaker 3: think when you zoom out, what this tells us is
Speaker 3: that it's not just specific pieces of misinformation and how
Speaker 3: it impacts public opinion per se. It's not just about
Speaker 3: the ad level, it's also about the system level guard
Speaker 3: guardrails that we need to have in place, right, And
Speaker 3: I think a lot of this is highlighted in the
Speaker 3: case study that we have in a chapter written by
Speaker 3: our written by our colleague, UH Jean Farlow's host Brown Miguel,
Speaker 3: who wrote the case study on on on digital populism
Speaker 3: and President Bolsonaro and Brazil, where these uh, these climate
Speaker 3: misinformation actions where transitioning entire institutions within the government of Brazil.
Speaker 3: So it didn't just impact specific people, It impacted how
Speaker 3: actual governmental agencies are run, how they're staffed, what they do,
Speaker 3: and uh that the impacted not just what's happening in Brazil,
Speaker 3: but but you know, what they did on an international
Speaker 3: stage and obstructing climate talks, et cetera. So it shows
Speaker 3: you how those narratives have the power to reship entire institutions, right.
Speaker 3: And I think the line that Jean Carlos had in
Speaker 3: our case that he was in Brazil and mean became
Speaker 3: a ministry memo, and that really kind of captures I
Speaker 3: think what has happened, right.
Speaker 4: I think what's happening in the US now is particularly
Speaker 4: interesting that issue of this misinformation influenced seeping into the
Speaker 4: scientific community, that concept of seepage. We were drawing on
Speaker 4: a lot of the work of Stephan Landowski is a
Speaker 4: researcher in Bristol, and he also has written about the
Speaker 4: subterranean war on science, which has been this kind of
Speaker 4: a quiet, almost hidden war of harassment or bullying of academics.
Speaker 4: And a lot of it has been and I'm sure
Speaker 4: this is the case with what Dominic was talking about
Speaker 4: being harassed. Often US academics will be pressured or bullied,
Speaker 4: but it's kind of hidden, really a lot of it.
Speaker 4: But now it's open. It's like we've gone from a
Speaker 4: cold war to a hot war. And in the US
Speaker 4: that the war on climate science is overt now where
Speaker 4: research is being defunded, climate information or just even mentions
Speaker 4: of climate are being stripped from government websites, and it's
Speaker 4: just a lot more overt this hostility and trying to
Speaker 4: undermine climate science.
Speaker 1: Okay, can I have you please explain why correcting this
Speaker 1: information isn't enough and since it's not, what would be
Speaker 1: enough to combat this problem or at least start to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we've talked a lot about motivation, and when people
Speaker 4: motivated to reject information, to reject the facts, then fact
Speaker 4: checking can struggle to be effective with those types of people.
Speaker 4: So fact checking, I think is necessary but insufficient. Like,
Speaker 4: we do need to push back against misinformation, but it's
Speaker 4: it's not the whole answer, and it won't work in
Speaker 4: all cases. So we do need a range of solutions,
Speaker 4: and one of them we've already discussed, which is inoculating
Speaker 4: people against the misleading techniques of misinformation. The psychology research
Speaker 4: shows that that approach that we call it technique based
Speaker 4: in opulation or logic based in opulation. Sorry to get
Speaker 4: all jargoning on you, but that approach works across the
Speaker 4: political spectrum. Nobody likes being misled, whether they're conservative or liberal,
Speaker 4: so explaining the techniques used to mislead can help neutralize
Speaker 4: polarizing client misinformation across the spectrum. The other thing we discuss,
Speaker 4: which is a lot more challenging but really important, is
Speaker 4: making systemic changes to make misinformation harder to spread. This
Speaker 4: was the kind of thing that I was advocating for
Speaker 4: Facebook to do, to build into their algorithms systems to
Speaker 4: make it harder for misinformation to spread, and they quite
Speaker 4: resistant against it. So I think that it's a very
Speaker 4: difficult thing to achieve, but we need to keep working
Speaker 4: to try to make those happen.
Speaker 1: Use this term in the book that I'd never heard,
Speaker 1: and I love it, So I want to end on
Speaker 1: having you define it for us. What is jiu jitsu persuasion?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the idea was proposed by Matty Hornsey, who's a
Speaker 4: colleague at the University of Queensland here in Australia. And
Speaker 4: the idea with jujitsu, it's about it's like using your
Speaker 4: opponent's weight, like working with their momentum rather than trying
Speaker 4: to push back against it. And the idea communication context
Speaker 4: is that rather than present scientific misinformation in a way
Speaker 4: that threatens people's motivations, beliefs, identity, present instead the science
Speaker 4: information in a way that that aligns with people's motivations
Speaker 4: or idea of this so you try to work with
Speaker 4: it rather than against it. So I'll give you a
Speaker 4: tangible example then, and this actually comes back to that
Speaker 4: idea of solutions aversion that I talked about way at
Speaker 4: the beginning. So there was a study that found that
Speaker 4: they presented climate change information in two ways. The climate
Speaker 4: science information was exactly the same in both ways, but
Speaker 4: in one message they said climate change is real, therefore
Speaker 4: we need to regulate the fossil fuel industry. In the
Speaker 4: other message, they said climate change is real, therefore we
Speaker 4: need to promote the nuclear industry. And they found that
Speaker 4: among Republicans they hated the fast message regulate the fossil
Speaker 4: fed industry in that way, but they were much more
Speaker 4: welcoming of the nuclear industry message, and so their attitude
Speaker 4: about climate change was vastly different. Depending on the message.
Speaker 4: The scientific information presented was exactly the same, but the
Speaker 4: solution was different. One threatened ideology and the other offend.
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Speaker 1: Amendment attorney is James Wheaton with the First Amendment Project.
Speaker 1: The show was created, written, and reported by me Amy Westervelt.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and see you next time.