Spanish-language disinformation and misinformation about climate change have risen hand in hand with the spread of false narratives online undermining renewable energy initiatives as extreme weather events have become more severe and recurring this summer.
The most common narratives include false allegations that wildfires are intentionally created to clear land for renewable energy projects, such as windmills or solar farms. Others spread disinformation about renewable energy projects’ harming animals or polluting the environment, according to a new study released Thursday that was commissioned by the environmental organizations GreenLatinos and Friends of the Earth.
Study co-authors Cristina López G. and Santiago Lakatos identified such narratives after having examined nearly 15,000 accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter, that were responsible for creating the top 20,000 most engaging Spanish-language posts that included anti-renewable energy content during the first six months of the year.
López G. and Lakatos are analysts at the social media analytics firm Graphika.
The findings come a week after Climate Action Against Disinformation, a coalition of more than 50 environmental groups, ranked X last in their approach to climate change misinformation.
X did not respond to requests for comment.
As in the spread of previous Spanish-language climate change disinformation online, social media accounts disseminating false information about renewable energy become more active during extreme weather events, López G. told NBC News.
“With increased content moderation that we saw coming from major platforms during the Covid pandemic, we also saw that a lot of these conspiratorial communities started moving towards those platforms where there are less restrictions, where there is more relaxed content moderation,” López G. he said.
“In understanding this correlation, there’s also an opportunity for us to anticipate when these sort of spikes in disinformation and misinformation might come and how to best educate audiences,” she said.
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