Climate Change Disinformation| Unraveling Debunked Climate Change Disinformation and Responses to Fact-Checks: Evidence From the United States, Netherlands, and Philippines

Abstract

Although climate change skepticism and denialism have been considered influential narratives in the contemporary digital information landscape, we know little about how such narratives are legitimized in climate change disinformation across different national settings. Against this background, this study relies on an in-depth qualitative content analysis of fact-checked disinformation in the Netherlands, the United States, and the Philippines as contrasting global cases. In addition, to explore the level of resistance to fact-checks, social media comments in response to fact-checking information were analyzed inductively. Our main findings indicate that climate skepticism was often constructed by deceptively re-interpreting, de-contextualizing, delegitimizing, or altering expert knowledge and scientific evidence. Disinformation claims and responses often used a populist logic, for which common sense and direct observations were juxtaposed to the alleged dishonesty of scientists. Responses to fact-checks mostly reinforced disinformation or challenged the fact-checker, which offers limited support for the real-life effectiveness of climate change debunks.