In a media ecosystem plagued by disinformation and polarisation, how do environmental communicators advocate for the facts when the facts are seen as opinion?
A friend recently sent me a YouTube video titled ‘The Lost History of Flat Earth‘. It’s a five hour long piece that she was convinced was “worth a watch.”
The friend in question is an engineer. She spends a large portion of her professional life viewing drone footage of vast lots of land (presumably with the curved horizon in sight). Her conviction about the value of this (5 HOUR) video got me thinking.
Why is it that what we see online is so much more convincing than the evidence that we can see with our own eyes?
Climate Change is Here
99% of scientific literature concurs thatanthropogenic climate change is real. In my short 25 years, I’ve lived through a 13 year drought, felt the world get warmer year by year, and watched the townsI grew up in burn, then be drowned by floods shortly after.
No matter who you are, or where you live, the climate crisis is here. It’s changing the foods we can eat, the air we breathe and the water we drink. So why does action remain a contested issue that governments, politicians and individuals continue to debate?
The Climate Crisis Conversation
For many the climate crisis is an abstract monolith. It moves slowly across a distant land, shrouded in scientific jargon. Environmental communicators are called on to use clever framing, rhetoric and metaphors that tailor messaging to audiences. To stick to the facts and evidence. But is it enough?
In Australia (and most anglophone countries), climate change is a controversial topic that is strongly linked to political ideology. Those with a right wing, neoliberal worldview tend to show indifference at best, and outright denial at worst. In contrast, left-leaning individuals usually hold serious concerns about the climate crisis, and are more likely to take action for change.
Polarisation has increased with the rise of right-wing populism that centres rhetoric on a narrative of struggle between ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’. Climate science, policies and initiatives are framed as a ‘woke’ agenda being pushed by elite scientists, academics and NGOs at the expense of ‘ordinary’ people.
This polarisation suggests there’s a larger problem at play than finding the right words, images or metaphors to kick off climate action. The real problems lie in the undergrowth; how ‘truth’ is cultivated by powerful actors exploiting beliefs, identity and manipulating class divisions to delay change.
Post-Truth
“Where objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion, where theoretical frameworks necessary to make sense of certain events are scorned, and where scientific truth is delegitimised.” – Vittorio Bufacchi
Hay fever always gets me in the first few days of spring. I get a bit itchy, or sleepy, or sneezy, but I’m not sure why. Everywhere and no-where, invisible spores float with a voracious persistence into every corner of my house, my car, my bed.
Something is wrong, but I can’t quite put my finger on what.
This is what the post-truth condition is like. You’ll notice it spurting from a politician’s mouth… headlining the morning news… or in a conversation over a wine (“I saw this crazy TikTok!”). In the political and social state of post-truth in which we find ourselves, empirical facts are flooded out by emotionally charged falsehoods that speak to our hopes, fears and beliefs. It is not simply a rejection of evidence but a rejection of the very idea that evidence matters more than ideology.
Politicians and mainstream media outlets can lie with no repercussions, and loyal audiences fail to hold them to account. Trust swiftly erodes when truth is tied to group allegiance over evidence.
Our digital media ecosystem provides the perfect conditions for post-truth to prosper.
Disinformation
Disinformation and misinformation flourish in the polarised online environment. Disinformation isn’t just the deliberate sowing of false information, but the production of false ‘truths’ designed to drive a political, economic or ideological agenda. Online, disinformation spreads as quickly as an invasive weed. It grows deep rooted communities where misleading claims are reinforced and the facts (or alternative opinions) are choked out.
Disinformation produces truth, manipulates knowledge and shapes collective understanding in a way that reproduce power hierarchies.
Fossil Fuel Corporations – The Most Powerful of Them All
Since the 1980s, fossil fuel corporations have sown disinformation campaigns to undermine climate science, shape public opinion and slow meaningful policy changes.
They fund think tanks, major media outlets and lobby politicians. They hire PR firms, deploy bots and sponsor influencers to run social media campaigns promoting fossil-fuel positive content. Narratives range from fearmongering about the economic impact of adopting green energy, presenting natural gas as a ‘clean energy’ and to casting environmental activists as murderers. These methods of dissemination obscure the origins of climate disinformation and frame it as ‘authentic’ knowledge. The climate crisis is reframed as the climate debate, and scientists, NGOs and journalists as partisan elites.
Filter Bubbles & Echo Chambers
Online, algorithms prioritise content that is provocative and emotive in order to increase user engagement and subsequently, platform profit. Filter bubbles and echo chambers plant us in a digital greenhouse surrounded by familiar seedlings of thought, while dissenting perspectives are pruned away.
This doesn’t just happen on social media but is present on search engines like Google, and AI chatbots (Basically anywhere online you get your information). When algorithms only show us what we want to hear and see, it’s hard to believe another reality exists. Despite often being viewed as neutral, these online conveyors of information are anything but – and their love for keeping us engaged regardless of the consequences is a key driver of polarisation and the erosion of trust.
Emotion Over Fact
The climate crisis is notoriously hard to communicate. It’s complex, unpredictable, scientific, and generally doesn’t contain much good news.
When digital platforms reward provocative content, It’s no wonder a conspiracy theory that Cyclone Alfred was purposefully engineered by meteorologists to control the population grabs more attention than the boring explanation of global warming and volatile weather.
For fossil fuel corporations (and their deep pockets), algorithmic bias is a structural advantage to keep sceptical narratives visible and delay action while confusion spreads.
This combination of mistrust, polarised opinion, and deliberate disinformation creates a media ecosystem where good rhetoric simply isn’t enough to break through.
What Does it Mean for Climate Communicators?
For climate communicators to be heard, advocacy needs to move beyond rhetoric to become action. While the facts remain important, NGOs, journalists and scientists need to work together to communicate the climate crisis in a way that humanises data, ties evidence to lived experience and refuses to stoke polarisation.
But more importantly, it requires a confrontation of the power structures that shape the spaces where climate communication happens.
Environmental communicators must call out disinformation, and demand that the platforms that facilitate it be held accountable. The investments that fund disinformation campaigns must be made transparent. The climate conversation must take on a tone of nuance and participation that dismantles anti-elitism, re-establishes trust, and allows diverse voices to be heard.
I got chatting to Dr. Nick Payne, a climate journalism researcher to learn about what’s working (and what’s not) for environmental communicators working in the space.
A special thanks to Dr. Nicholas Payne for his fantastic interview for this piece. You can find out about more of Nick’s work here.
Podcast Transcript – Climate Journalism with Dr. Nick Payne
Audio
Coffee machine grinding grains making coffee. Pixabay audio by @freesound_community.
Podcast background music. Pixabay audio by @music_for_video
Leaves. Pixabay audio by @freesound_community
Typing on laptop keyboard. Pixabay audio by @sarthakraj_308
Footsteps on dirt-gravel. Pixabay audio by @@freesound_community
Crumpling newspaper. Pixabay audio by @freesound_community
Cash register kaching. Pixabay audio by @dragon-studio
New notification – 3. Pixabay audio by @dragon-studio
Broken printer, stalled machine. Pixabay audio by @freesound_community
Evie Molloy 
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