Confirmation Bias and the Persistence of Misinformation on Climate Change

Zhou, Yanmengqian; Shen, Lijiang

doi:10.1177/00936502211028049

Cited by 64 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Researchers have warned early on that the results may be jeopardized, one, by the attitude of trying to meet targets of which politicians believe that they are aspired by citizens, and, secondly, by the methods of policy evaluation (Stripple and Bulkeley (2013). There also is the danger of misinterpretation or misinformation on climate change (Zhou and Shen, 2022). Another reason for concern is the intention of the European Union to couple the Recovery and Resilience Facility https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/recoverycoronavirus/recovery-and-resilience-facility_en) with its Green Deal (https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/eu-climate-action_en).…”

Section: Clear-cut Approaches To Policies On Climate Change?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Weighing Externalities of Economic Recovery Projects: An Alternative to Green Taxonomies that is Fairer and more Realistic

Bardy¹,

Rubens

2022

BEL

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Natural and man-made crises and disasters often cause untold destruction, but also provide multiple opportunities for economic redevelopment post the crisis. Like other crises the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred public and private entities to become engaged in significant redevelopment efforts. Policymakers in some countries view these efforts as an opening for not only including other issues such as deficits in infrastructure and the social systems, but also for redefining their political priorities towards a “green economy”. While pursuing various policy objectives at the same time is a prudent undertaking, it seems rather questionable that politicians, under the pressure of ecological activism, would evaluate all crisis policy measures by their effect on environmental outcomes. We are seeing this in the European Union (EU) as it is about to couple its Recovery and Resilience Facility (financed through the “Next Generation EU Recovery Fund”) with its Green Deal. In the U.S., so far, the Build Back Better package and the American Rescue Plan seem to seek separate evaluation schemes for their different policy fields. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the wide-ranging opinions that exist on the intention to make recovery support contingent on ecological effects: For example, there is the classic Tinbergen Rule which states that for each policy target there must be at least one policy tool; thus, if there are fewer tools than targets, then some policy goals will not ultimately be achieved. Likewise, long-term climate change mitigation can only be achieved with long-term policies that consider and weigh out all externalities. Moreover, embarking on long term recovery plans cannot solely be formulated and implemented on ex-ante definitions of ecological impacts. The paper raises the question whether requesting ecological effects from all recovery programs is just and fair. It contrasts the various options of coupling recovery efforts and climate mitigation with state-of-the-art approaches of valuating multiple externalities: weighing the diverse externalities of policy projects can determine which policy tools to choose. It also demonstrates the downside of a policy that are solely focuses on granting financial support, if not, a project can effectively meet a pre-specified ecological and energy goal as set up by the EU and which ranks recovery projects according to their arbitrary effect on climate change. A wider scope of decision criteria will produce more effective ways to “build back better”.

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Section: Clear-cut Approaches To Policies On Climate Change?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Weighing Externalities of Economic Recovery Projects: An Alternative to Green Taxonomies that is Fairer and more Realistic

Bardy¹,

Rubens

2022

BEL

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“…One such factor is a person's political perspective, yet the evidence is mixed. Some research shows that people are more likely to buy into fake news, and mistake fictitious for genuine stories, if the false information aligns with their political beliefs or worldview (Frenda et al 2013; Greene et al 2021; Walter and Tukachinsky 2020; Zhou and Shen 2022). Other research suggests that susceptibility to fake news is less about how closely information aligns with an individual's political ideology and more about the extent to which an individual engages in analytical thinking (Pennycook and Rand 2019).…”

Section: The Need For An Interdisciplinary Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying and minimising the impact of fake visual media: Current and future directions

Nightingale

Wade

2022

Mem. Mind & Media

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Over the past two decades, society has seen incredible advances in digital technology, resulting in the wide availability of cheap and easy-to-use software for creating highly sophisticated fake visual content. This democratisation of creating such content, paired with the ease of sharing it via social media, means that ill-intended fake images and videos pose a significant threat to society. To minimise this threat, it is necessary to be able to distinguish between real and fake content; to date, however, human perceptual research indicates that people have an extremely limited ability to do so. Generally, computational techniques fair better in these tasks, yet remain imperfect. What's more, this challenge is best considered as an arms race – as scientists improve detection techniques, fraudsters find novel ways to deceive. We believe that it is crucial to continue to raise awareness of the visual forgeries afforded by new technology and to examine both human and computational ability to sort the real from the fake. In this article, we outline three considerations for how society deals with future technological developments that aim to help secure the benefits of that technology while minimising its possible threats. We hope these considerations will encourage interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration that ultimately goes some way to limit the proliferation of harmful content and help to restore trust online.

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“…While there are ways to teach people to spot misinformation about climate and other environmental topics, false beliefs can take hold quickly with individuals, become politicized, and are much harder to counter than proactive efforts (203,299,300). Issues related to OHH and the actions to solve them through policy and other means certainly have the potential to be politicized due to cognitive biases like motivated reasoning (301), confirmation bias (302), and hyperbolic discounting (303) and, as a result, subject to many of these same challenges (162).…”

Section: Remaining Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communicating ocean and human health connections: An agenda for research and practice

Reamer

2022

Front. Public Health

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The emergence of ocean and human health (OHH) science as a distinct scholarly discipline has led to increased research outputs from experts in both the natural and social sciences. Formal research on communication strategies, messaging, and campaigns related to OHH science remains limited despite its importance as part of the social processes that can make knowledge actionable. When utilized to communicate visible, local issues for targeting audiences, OHH themes hold the potential to motivate action in pursuit of solutions to environmental challenges, supplementing efforts to address large-scale, abstract, or politicized issues such as ocean acidification or climate change. Probing peer-reviewed literature from relevant areas of study, this review article outlines and reveals associations between society and the quality of coastal and marine ecosystems, as well as key themes, concepts, and findings in OHH science and environmental communication. Recommendations for future work concerning effective ocean and human health science communication are provided, creating a platform for innovative scholarship, evidence-based practice, and novel collaboration across disciplines.

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Confirmation Bias and the Persistence of Misinformation on Climate Change

Cited by 64 publications

References 56 publications

Weighing Externalities of Economic Recovery Projects: An Alternative to Green Taxonomies that is Fairer and more Realistic

Weighing Externalities of Economic Recovery Projects: An Alternative to Green Taxonomies that is Fairer and more Realistic

Identifying and minimising the impact of fake visual media: Current and future directions

Communicating ocean and human health connections: An agenda for research and practice

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