Blueprint of a smokescreen: Introducing the validated climate disinformation corpus for behavioural research on combating climate disinformation
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
Standard
in: British Journal of Psychology, 2025.
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Blueprint of a smokescreen
T2 - Introducing the validated climate disinformation corpus for behavioural research on combating climate disinformation
AU - Spampatti, Tobia
AU - Brosch, Tobias
AU - Mumenthaler, Christian
AU - Hahnel, Ulf J.J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s). British Journal of Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The British Psychological Society.
PY - 2025
Y1 - 2025
N2 - Behavioural science research has the potential to develop evidence-based strategies to fight disinformation about climate science and climate mitigation action; however, this research has yet to be conducted systematically with validated sets of climate disinformation stimuli. Here, we present the Climate Disinformation Corpus, a collection of climate disinformation statements designed to systematize experimental research testing future disinformation interventions. Using computational social science techniques, we gathered climate disinformation stimuli from the social media platform Twitter/X. We identified 78 statements containing disinformation about the existence, the causes, the consequences of climate change, the reliability and objectivity of climate scientists, and arguing for the delay of climate policies. The Climate Disinformation Corpus showed good heterogeneity across 15 validation measures (e.g., perceived persuasiveness, perceived trustworthiness, and sharing intentions) in a validation study involving a representative sample of N = 503 British participants. Furthermore, the climate disinformation statements were correlated with four individual differences measures related to belief in climate science and support for climate actions, congruently with theoretical expectations. We conclude with practical suggestions on implementing the Climate Disinformation Corpus in disinformation research according to different research questions.
AB - Behavioural science research has the potential to develop evidence-based strategies to fight disinformation about climate science and climate mitigation action; however, this research has yet to be conducted systematically with validated sets of climate disinformation stimuli. Here, we present the Climate Disinformation Corpus, a collection of climate disinformation statements designed to systematize experimental research testing future disinformation interventions. Using computational social science techniques, we gathered climate disinformation stimuli from the social media platform Twitter/X. We identified 78 statements containing disinformation about the existence, the causes, the consequences of climate change, the reliability and objectivity of climate scientists, and arguing for the delay of climate policies. The Climate Disinformation Corpus showed good heterogeneity across 15 validation measures (e.g., perceived persuasiveness, perceived trustworthiness, and sharing intentions) in a validation study involving a representative sample of N = 503 British participants. Furthermore, the climate disinformation statements were correlated with four individual differences measures related to belief in climate science and support for climate actions, congruently with theoretical expectations. We conclude with practical suggestions on implementing the Climate Disinformation Corpus in disinformation research according to different research questions.
KW - climate disinformation
KW - misinformation
KW - social media
KW - Psychology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105011065927&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/bjop.70012
DO - 10.1111/bjop.70012
M3 - Journal articles
C2 - 40682248
AN - SCOPUS:105011065927
JO - British Journal of Psychology
JF - British Journal of Psychology
SN - 0007-1269
ER -