[TheClimate.Vote] March21, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*March 21, 2021*/

[worthy of our attention]
*Nudging Social Media Users to Think Critically Helps Slow the Spread of 
Fake News, Study Finds*
By Nick Cunningham • Friday, March 19, 2021
Many people who share fake news online do so because they aren’t paying 
close attention to what they’re sharing, according to a new study. The 
research found that simply prompting people to think about the accuracy 
of their news content helps curtail the spread of falsehoods.

“When deciding what to share on social media, people are often 
distracted from considering the accuracy of the content,” the authors, 
from the Hill/Levene Schools of Business at the University of Regina and 
the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology (MIT), wrote in the new paper published in Nature.

While the spread of inaccurate or false information and conspiracy 
theories is nothing new — the climate denying disinformation campaign by 
the fossil fuel industry dates back decades — the study’s findings 
undercut the notion that there is a widespread desire among the public 
to actively spread disinformation. Rather, it adds further evidence 
showing how social media allows for fake news to spread rapidly — and 
how to slow it down.

Online disinformation seemed to hit a fever pitch in the past year, with 
the spread of the violent QAnon conspiracy, Covid denial, 2020 election 
conspiracies, and pro-insurrection voices all intermingling and 
cross-pollinating.

But instead of the malign actors involved in creating disinformation — 
such as the Koch-backed network of think tanks, charities and 
politicians seeking to undermine climate science, or, more recently, 
coordinated social media campaigns and troll farms, sometimes backed by 
government intelligence agencies, aimed at undermining elections around 
the world — the new Nature study looks at the much larger set of 
everyday social media users who share this type of misinformation 
online, often unwittingly, or at least not with malicious intent. The 
results offer some reasons for hope, as well as some tools to fight 
disinformation.

The study surveyed thousands of U.S. Twitter and Facebook users. It 
found that most people do not wish to spread fake news and, in fact, 
they rate accuracy as an important principle. When asked about what 
motivates sharing, participants rated accuracy higher than other 
factors, such as whether a piece of news was interesting, funny, or 
politically-aligned with their beliefs. Moreover, most people are fairly 
good at identifying and distinguishing accurate news from false news. In 
addition, most people do not share inaccurate news for hyperpartisan 
reasons either...
- -
In other words, when asked about accuracy, people were good at spotting 
accurate versus fake stories. But when asked about sharing, people chose 
to share more stories, even fake ones. And they chose to share stories 
that fit their political views at a much higher rate (by 19 percentage 
points) than stories that went against their political beliefs.

That would seem to suggest an ideological or partisan motivation. But 
the authors conducted another experiment, with over 5,000 participants 
on Twitter who had previously shared news from Breitbart and Infowars, 
two sites professional fact-checkers have rated as highly untrustworthy. 
The authors sent a private Twitter message to the participants and asked 
them to judge whether or not a single non-political headline was accurate.

The researchers then monitored the participants’ subsequent sharing 
behavior and found a significant improvement in sharing choices; in the 
24 hours after the prompt, participants shared relatively more news from 
reliable outlets such as CNN and relatively less from sources of 
inaccurate information like Infowars.

The authors surmise that simply redirecting attention towards the 
concept of accuracy helped cut down on sharing of false information. 
“[W]e find that the single accuracy message made users more discerning 
in their subsequent sharing decisions,” they wrote in their study. 
“Relative to baseline, the accuracy message increased the average 
quality of the news sources shared.”
The researchers replicated these experiments with Covid-19 information 
and found a similar dynamic.
The study shows that there is a disconnect between what people share and 
what they consider to be accurate, suggesting that people share content 
in which they themselves might not necessarily believe...
- -
The new study's authors concede that the research is limited to sharing 
of political news among people in the United States. They note that 
follow up research could examine the impact of subtle accuracy nudges 
when coordinated disinformation campaigns are in question, such as the 
climate denial or election fraud, which are backed by groups actively 
working to promote a falsehood.

In a recent analysis, DeSmog found that dozens of prominent climate 
deniers supported the January 6 insurrection in Washington D.C. They 
spread debunked claims about election fraud and in some cases supported 
political violence. This is the type of campaign that was then likely 
shared by many more people who, as the Nature study illustrates, may 
have shared the content without taking time to think about its accuracy.

Experts have identified tools and methods for protection against 
malicious disinformation campaigns, such as “prebunking,” which involves 
learning about the tactics and tricks of bad actors before you are 
exposed to them. However, such campaigns of weaponized disinformation 
are potentially more challenging to combat when compared to one-off fake 
news stories.
https://twitter.com/DG_Rand/status/1372217700626411527
https://www.desmogblog.com/2021/03/19/social-media-slow-spread-fake-news-misinformation-study 


- -

[source material]
*Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online*
Gordon Pennycook, Ziv Epstein, Mohsen Mosleh, Antonio A. Arechar, Dean 
Eckles & David G. Rand
Nature (2021) - Published: 17 March 2021
*Abstract*
In recent years, there has been a great deal of concern about the 
proliferation of false and misleading news on social media. Academics 
and practitioners alike have asked why people share such misinformation, 
and sought solutions to reduce the sharing of misinformation. Here, we 
attempt to address both of these questions. First, we find that the 
veracity of headlines has little effect on sharing intentions, despite 
having a large effect on judgments of accuracy. This dissociation 
suggests that sharing does not necessarily indicate belief. Nonetheless, 
most participants say it is important to share only accurate news. To 
shed light on this apparent contradiction, we carried out four survey 
experiments and a field experiment on Twitter; the results show that 
subtly shifting attention to accuracy increases the quality of news that 
people subsequently share. Together with additional computational 
analyses, these findings indicate that people often share misinformation 
because their attention is focused on factors other than accuracy—and 
therefore they fail to implement a strongly held preference for accurate 
sharing. Our results challenge the popular claim that people value 
partisanship over accuracy, and provide evidence for scalable 
attention-based interventions that social media platforms could easily 
implement to counter misinformation online.
*Conclusion*
Together, these studies suggest that when deciding what to share on 
social media, people are often distracted from considering the accuracy 
of the content. Therefore, shifting attention to the concept of accuracy 
can cause people to improve the quality of the news that they share. 
Furthermore, we found a dissociation between accuracy judgments and 
sharing intentions that suggests that people may share news that they do 
not necessarily have a firm belief in. As a consequence, people’s 
beliefs may not be as partisan as their social media feeds seem to 
indicate. Future work is needed to more precisely identify people’s 
state of belief when not reflecting on accuracy. Is it that people hold 
no particular belief one way or the other, or that they tend to assume 
content is true by default?
download PDF - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03344-2.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03344-2

- -

[Trained journalist gives video comment on Congressional duplicity]
*Emily Atkin on Calling Climate BS*
Mar 20, 2021
greenmanbucket
Emily Atkin is a climate journalist, and editor of the Heated newsletter
http://heated.world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpuvHErrBKg



[Wildfire Today PBS video of controversy]
*PBS film explores issues around the largest fire ever in California*
March 20, 2021
Last year the Creek Fire burned 379,895 acres
 From PBS. Afterburn – The Start of the Creek Fire.
Jeff Aiello, a producer from Fresno, California, created a 26-minute 
film for PBS about the Creek Fire northeast of Fresno, California that 
last year burned 379,895 acres to become the largest single fire in the 
recorded history of the state.

“Afterburn — The Creek Fire Debate” includes opposing points of view 
about fire and forest management — for example from a fire ecologist and 
a forester. You might find yourself picking sides, or not agreeing with 
either side.
https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/03/20/pbs-film-explores-issues-around-the-largest-fire-ever-in-california/


[humor, politics, history, Antarctica, video]
*Who Owns Antarctica?*
Mar 15, 2021

    T-t-t-oday we're asking
    Who does Antarctica b-b-belong to?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg1ScKoBnHA


[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - March 21, 2007 *

March 21, 2007 • In her CBSNews.com "Notebook" segment, Katie Couric 
observes:

"The last time Al Gore came to Capitol Hill--six years ago--he was there 
to certify the electoral college results that made George Bush president.

"But today it was a triumphant return, this time as a private citizen, 
to declare that the world faces a 'planetary emergency' over climate 
change. And now, a lot of his skeptics agree that Gore makes a powerful 
point.

"The scientific consensus is clear, and Gore urged Congress to listen to 
scientists, not special interests. He pushed for an immediate freeze on 
greenhouse gases, as well as cleaner power plants, more efficient cars, 
and stronger conservation efforts.

"Gore said 'a few years from now...the kinds of proposals we're talking 
about today are going to seem so small compared to the scale of the 
challenge.'

"Here's hoping Congress puts partisanship aside, and comes together to 
act boldly on global warming."

http://youtu.be/sYpj2ZYfS3M

(In his remarks to Congress, Gore famously states: "The planet has a 
fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor 
says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science 
fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, 
you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action." 
Also, at this hearing, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a 
Republican, states, "I believe the debate over global warming is 
over"--an idea that would be considered heresy throughout the entire GOP 
just two years later.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032100945.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11437-al-gore-rallies-us-congress-over-climate.html#.UvtuMKa9LCQ 



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