Triplecheck: Over the past week, more than 4 million people were exposed to climate misinformation.
Over the past week, more than 4 million people were exposed to climate misinformation. There were a number of attacks on the efficacy of clean energy and the impact it has on employment, based in part on a recent article in The New York Times. (Check out this CAP report for a different perspective!)
However, it’s worth noting that the attacks with the widest reach wrapped support for efforts to combat climate change into a larger negative narrative focused on cultural issues. For example, a tweet attacking the Texas Democrats leaving the state to block a vote on legislation that would undermine the right to vote called them hypocrites for taking a private jet while supporting efforts to combat climate change. This is ridiculous, not just because the ad-hominem attack on private planes is fundamentally flawed (see last week’s newsletter) but also factually inaccurate, because those members -- many of whom are not exactly stalwart environmentalists -- are not unified on the issue of climate change. It was seen by more than 2 million people over the past week.
Tweets attacking White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki for her statement that social media platforms should do more to combat misinformation online wrapped climate change into their arguments, noting that people who say that “climate change is racist” and that “men can chestfeed babies” shouldn’t try to censor social media. Unsurprisingly, the idea that the White House is proposing to censor social media has been rebutted.
How progressives should combat the extremely successful Republican effort to push cultural issues into the headlines of the public discussion on policy development was explored in a recent article by Ed Kilgore in the Intelligencer. In his piece, he rebuts the line of argument that Democrats should “talk about progressive goals that are not ideologically polarizing...the point of public communication should be to win votes. And the way that you do that is to not trigger ideological polarization.” Kilgore notes that “Democrats do not have the power to keep ‘ideological polarization’ from happening on cultural issues...if they are Democratic weak points, Republicans are going to talk about them incessantly, and if Democrats fall silent, Republicans will be free to define Democrats as they wish. Silence is not golden, in other words; in politics, it’s often a big mistake.” It’s an interesting read.
In this space each week, triplecheck will share information on the climate misinformation we’re seeing online – what’s going viral, how many people are seeing it, and who’s responsible for moving it. triplecheck was initiated by the Climate Action Campaign and was created to develop innovative tools to help fight misinformation.
See you next week!