Viewers, be aware!
YouTube: a corrupted source
for climate info.
How do you find out about scientific advances? The news? Internet sites? Social media? YouTube? Where you gather information from can have a huge impact on your opinions and the way you act.
Whilst there’s a broad scientific consensus around anthropogenic climate change and the need to address this global challenge, public opinion remains divided. Yet politicians and companies will only act in response to climate change if public consensus makes it in their best interests. And, of course, public opinion depends on what information is available…
Published research in scientific journals is rarely accessible and comes couched in technical language – a barrier to anyone without specific training in the relevant field. Instead most people rely on the news media and, increasingly, on the internet. Yet where traditional news media outlets have checks in place to ensure that the information they present is accurate, online it’s a whole other story.
Which makes research by Joachim Allgaier (2019) at Aachen University in Germany especially worrying. Using key climate search terms he analysed 200 videos about climate and climate modification. Only 89 of the videos supported the scientific consensus, whilst 4 were videos of climate scientists discussing climate topics with deniers. The remaining 107 videos contained views that opposed scientific consensus: 16 denying anthropogenic climate change and 91 videos propagating climate conspiracy theories.
More worryingly still, many of these videos use genuine scientific terms (such as geoengineering) to bolster the credibility of their output, whilst twisting the meaning and usage of those terms to meet the arguments being made. It’s a strategy to help the output avoid being considered as conspiracy theories but it further confuses the issue and can hoodwink the unwary. Viewers beware!
Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2019.00036