#Fracking: Tracing Climate Change Disinformation on Social Media

Abstract

Wikimedia platforms are not isolated entities, nor are editors, readers, or volunteers around the world. As a community, we are connected by our shared commitment to free access to technology and knowledge. However, societies are evolving alongside other digital platforms, and leveraging this momentum will help us understand our role in the digital world. In this context, disinformation has become a global, political, and cultural phenomenon. In collaboration with Wikimedia Colombia, I carried out a project investigating how climate change disinformation and denialism manifest and circulate on social media. Our starting point was to understand the phenomenon, identify gaps across platforms, and ask what new insights could be generated and what new actions could be taken. In this project, I applied digital methods to study the case of #Fracking on X (formerly Twitter). We found that climate change disinformation primarily circulates through hashtag chains (ranging from political to generic), intensifies during real-time events (such as news coverage or electoral debates), and reinforces a form of nationalism grounded in energy autonomy. The results of my research aim to contribute to the community in two ways: by encouraging efforts to combat disinformation that go beyond content analysis and instead examine strategies of dissemination and activation. Second, by ensuring that once we understand, analyze, document, and enrich platforms with this knowledge, we are equipped to design productive, efficient, and impactful strategies to counter and prevent this phenomenon.