COVID-19. Opinion Piece – Misinformation and the Social Media

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May 10, 2020
Opinion Piece – Misinformation and the Social Media
Misinformation brought about by fake news is perhaps one of the most common yet pressing issues that the modern society is yet to address. This is despite the fact that this issue could cause a greater divide among people by creating an air of violence, discrimination, or mistrust. For this assigned work, I chose the seemingly trivial topic on Climate Change and misinformation. I would say it is trivial and, at the same time, not an easy topic for everyone. Why is this so? Despite the efforts of concerned individuals, groups, organizations, and most of the world, misinformation and fake news regarding Climate Change still persist. Accordingly, the subsequent sections of this paper would focus on answering the different pertinent questions such as is it important that everyone buys the idea of Climate Change and how can we resolve the issue of misinformation leading to Climate Change denial? In order to answer this, the initial section of this paper would present non-academic news articles. To help me with finding these articles, I had to start with the key words “Climate Change Denial”. One such article, published in the online site of The Conversation and written by two researchers, entitled There are three types of climate change denier, and most of us are at least one shows us that in the year 2019, there still those who reject the consensus on climate change.
Misinformation and Whaling
What do we make of this information? For this, and I strongly believe, the dissemination of unreliable information is the culprit. According to Del Vicario, et al., when we entered the technological age, the traditional channels of information that goes from the source/producer to the end-user/receiver was somehow superseded by the online venues, especially the social media. Social media created a venue where the production of information became direct, as is the reception of it by the users. Accordingly, in an article written by Herzog, she noted how climatologists dealing on climate change (climate change scientists) have become targeted by fake news whether directly or indirectly. For example, one of the whaling attempts to discredit climate change studies states that “carbon dioxide is good because it increases plant growth”.
This simply shows that social media, if not used properly and with vigilance, can very well be a part of the “Web of Denial” which is composed of groups and individuals who enable misinformation (Brulle and Roberts). What enables these “enablers”? It is the very nature, for example, of the internet. This virtual space provides for anonymity and disintermediation needed which enable the omission of the balance and check and several ways to filter these unreliable information before they reach the target users. What more is that there are people who grab the opportunity to lobby against Climate Change awareness.
According to Tucker, there has been a documented effort of these groups of people which intend to confuse and sway the minds of the people into thinking that Climate Change is a hoax. They also intended to undermine th...