tactic-10-evaluating-gen-ai
On 29 October 2024, torrential rain and flash floods wreaked havoc on the Spanish city of Valencia. Within a few hours, streets became muddy rivers with currents powerful enough to rip up pavements, tear down walls and hurl vehicles like toys. It was the worst flooding in Spain’s history, killing 227 people. According to scientists, the floods were made worse by the effects of climate change.
Disordered discourse is the disintegration of the information systems society relies on for a shared understanding of what is real, what is true. Those systems are broken. The climate conversation is a case study of their collapse. In this tactic, renowned journalist and founder of Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins, goes to the heart of why disinformation is so pervasive and why it is essential to counter it and find a way back to a shared reality, to protect the planet and democracy.
While climate conversations online are undoubtedly becoming more polarised, as with many politicised issues, in reality there is still often more that unites us than divides us. This tactic explores how we cross the divides created by our fractured digital disinformation landscape, find those ready to listen, and identify common ground.
The climate disinformation landscape is expanding at speed and scale, driven by actors with powerful vested interests from the fossil fuel industry to far-right politicians and social media influencers. Their reasons may be different, but their methods are largely the same: sow doubt about the existence of climate change and seed scepticism about its causes and solutions, thereby undermining public support for climate action.
With the arrival of algorithmically determined social media, many new digital tools and enablers have helped these actors expand their playbook. This tactic...
Climate disinformation is seeded via digital supply chains, through which coordinated, inauthentic online campaigns, often hosted on Big Tech platforms, are spread to millions of users. Guy Porter, part of the Global Witness team, reveals how Open Source Intelligence investigative techniques can be used to track these campaigns back to their sources.
For decades, the fossil fuel industry has played an active role in spreading false narratives to influence policy in its favour. InfluenceMap’s team offer a step-by-step guide to tracking these narrative threads can help tackle them at source.
False narratives do not spread randomly in today’s digital climate. They move through structured networks connecting influencers, blogs, news outlets, and social media groups working together — though often autonomously and unknowingly — to amplify climate denial and delay action. This tactic explores how you can identify these digital relationships to reveal the hidden communities and information flows that drive climate misinformation.
Climate emergencies are ripe opportunities for disinformation campaigns to flourish, adding chaos to already dangerous situations. Reacting quickly is essential to ensure the facts are not drowned out. This tactic explores response techniques, such as real-time monitoring, that can be deployed at speed and scale.
Climate-related digital advertising can reveal the battlegrounds of political and public debate. These ads not only shape opinions on energy, climate policy, and the environment — they can also reflect deeper strategies around how campaigns persuade, divide the public, lobby policymakers, and mobilise people.
The narrative landscape of climate dis-/misinformation is not about a single platform or idea, but an entire ecosystem of emotionally charged, identity-driven narratives designed to corrode trust in institutions, undermine scientific legitimacy, and fracture democratic consensus. Ripple Research’s tactic of narrative cartographies offers a tool to navigate these narratives, make sense of the chaos, and create a considered response.
In 2023, Apple released its now-infamous Mother Nature commercial. The five-minute video features a boardroom full of Apple executives—both hired actors and actual Apple employees, including CEO Tim Cook—paid a visit by a cantankerous Mother Nature, played by Academy Award-winning actress Octavia Spencer. “This is my third corporate responsibility gig today,” she quips. “So, who wants to disappoint me first?” Apple employees take turns reporting their progress toward carbon neutrality, including ending the use of leather in their watch bands and iPhone cases, transporting products via sea...
How we interact with information is undergoing a revolution: our online searches are no longer generating a list of ranked sites to explore for ourselves, instead AI is directly summarising the answer for us. But how is it being trained, by who, and to what end? Ultimately, AI’s information provision is changing the way we understand the world and the future of our planet. Carlos Hernández-Echevarría, founder of Maldita.es — a non-profit designed to tackle disinformation, explores the consequences of this seismic shift in the climate information landscape.
Media’s ecological footprint is large and yet largely unmapped. To truly address the scale of climate information pollution, these hidden impacts need to be revealed. Antonio López explores how AI can be used to map these footprints, while acknowledging the paradox of doing so.
Algorithms quietly determine the news we see, the voices we hear, and the ideologies we are exposed to, making them invisible yet profoundly influential in shaping our identities and worldviews.One example of this in practice is TikTok. TikTok’s success is largely a result of its algorithm, which excels at identifying its users’ interests. This tactic explores what this means, both for climate disinformation and for climate action.
To truly tackle the scale of the climate disinformation problem, we need to go to its source and stop it there. This requires policy at scale; policy that acknowledges that information integrity is a human right, inextricably intertwined with democracy and freedom of speech. Pioneers in the field, Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) explore in this tactic how the guardrails that protect this human right need to be strengthened in the disinformation age.
Recent research from EU Disinfo Lab highlights how platform policies are woefully inadequate to address the scale of the climate disinformation crisis. This is a problem waiting to be solved. In this tactic, Ana Romero — author of the research, offers the proactive steps that can be taken now to stem the flow of disinformation.
Policy is not yet in place to fully tackle the threat posed by climate dis/misinformation. In parallel to pressing for its creation, it is vital that the policy levers that do exist are used to their fullest. This tactic explores how researchers can use current legislation, such as the Digital Services Act, as an effective tool by framing disinformation as a systemic risk factor — threatening freedom of information, freedom of opinion, civic discourse, democratic processes, and public health and security.
Working both outside and within the limits of mainstream platforms matters for climate communications. This tactic looks at how you can stretch those limits to reach people where they are — using the functionality of mainstream platform advertising in ethical, values-aligned ways. And how alternative approaches can help you get your message to where it matters most, and build engaged communities based on trust and support.
Tech infrastructure is often unseen and unthought of, as long as it works. However, for many, at-risk groups and organisations — increasingly including those in the climate movement — Big Tech platforms can create vulnerabilities, and can be counter to values, particularly around energy and environmental harm. This tactic explores the role of self-hosted infrastructure to enhance security, ownership, and mission-alignment.
Digital tools have become so embedded in the way we work that we almost forget that they are a choice. These choices increasingly matter for climate work as the consequences of these tools are becoming clearer. Their effects on our planet are already manifesting, but so too are their often-overlooked impacts on the way we think, interact, and engage with the world around us. This tactic explores how you can be more intentional about the tools we choose and use to support your work.
“All too often in the face of a task, we move quickly to “doing” without first reflecting on “being”—what we personally bring to the task, as well as what others might. And the most important thing we can bring is our state of mind.” Christiana Figueres, The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis
All too often, campaigners and corporates can be seen on opposing sides of the climate debate. Yet increasingly, as the material impacts of climate change are being felt across the economy and supply chains, their interests are aligned. Harriet Kingaby argues that corporates may in fact be the ally that campaigners need in tackling the climate information pollution problem.
Climate narratives do not always need to be climate narratives. In an increasingly polarised communications landscape, messages that transcend politics and ideologies are needed vital. In this tactic, Henning Flaskamp explores how connecting planetary health to human health can create strategic narratives that resonate beyond ‘traditional’ environmental communication strategies.
Corporate climate communications are in crisis. Confusion abounds, and many companies are choosing to say nothing rather than say the wrong thing. But silence is simply letting disinformation speak louder. This tactic is all about how companies can show up in the climate conversation with courage and credibility.
Advertising positive futures is a powerful way of prebunking false narratives around climate action. Florencia Lujani of ACT Climate Labs shows how advertising campaigns can resonate emotionally and reach people where they are, persuading the “middle majority” of the benefits of climate solutions.
Online spaces amplify climate action; they also amplify climate harassment and violence. Increasingly, as climate discourse is politicised and polarised, those seeking to surface credible, fact-based narratives risk abuse that can escalate from online trolling to personal attacks in both the digital and physical space. Building resilience through digital security measures and psychological and emotional support is vital to ensure those taking action on climate can continue to do so. This tactic shines a light on the issue and offers practical responses.
“Climate change is not just a scientific issue — it’s a cultural one. Art helps us reimagine our place in the world.” John Akomfrah, filmmaker
Those with influence shape the narrative and information landscape. This has always been the case. But now there is a whole new landscape of influencers — those who are building their careers around directing the thinking and behaviours of their followers. These influencers can be powerful vectors for climate communications, both positive and negative — in this tactic, Cynthia Soneghet explores how.
With geopolitical and economic headwinds buffeting businesses, corporate climate communications have been at a crossroads — be vocal and invite backlash or be quiet and invite criticism? At a time when audiences need to understand and engage with climate action rather than climate promises, Chris Pratt, climate communications expert, considers what direction businesses can take.
To move beyond our current chaotic and fear-based climate discourse, we need to tell different stories. We need to surface truths that are not just those of the scale and urgency of the problem, but also of what can, and is, being done — the transformative truths. Solutions Journalism is a tactic that does just that, changing the narrative landscape and creating a conversation that people want to re-engage with.