Concurrent crises: gender and climate disinformation

Hello everyone

This newsletter we’re diving into the shadowy world of disinformation.While there has always been fake news of some sort (gossip, rumors, fibs, smear campaigns etc) the combination of rising social media use and the COVID-19 pandemic has seen disinformation rise to new levels. Tackling it has never been so urgent; several important elections are coming up in 2024, and this will be a year of vital importance for the future of democracy. Whether or not we can get ahead of the rise of disinformation will determine much of what our future might look like.

Disinformation at its core is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. Famously in the climate world, Exxon, Shell,Chevron and other large oil and gas companies spent millions to spread false information that climate change wasn’t real, and that the science was still out on whether it was man-made (despite the fact that their own scientists were making incredibly accurate predictions about the science of climate change). That playbook was based off of the Tobacco industry’s disinformation campaign strategy, which saw the industry spend millions of dollars sowing distrust in the science connecting tobacco and cancer, even though they were fully aware of those connections. That disinformation campaign had real life consequences, just ask the Marlborough men.  We are watching a replay of this, with climate action now hampered for decades by the seeds of mistrust sown by the Oil and Gas industry. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently stressed the fact that disinformation is a major challenge to climate action.

In the last decade, other kinds of disinformation campaigns have also taken root. Coordinated anti-gender disinformation campaigns – especially against trans people – have become rampant. And they haven’t come out of nowhere. Between 2011 and 2021, annual spending on the anti-gender movement increased by around 400%, with Russia, Europe, and the US as the top funders. From 2013-2017, LGBTQ+ movements worldwide received $1.2 billion in funding compared to the anti-gender movement, which received $3.7 billion. An analysis by the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) found last year disinformation targeting the LGBTQ+ community is one of the "most present and consistent in the European Union." And a recent briefing to the European Parliament also warned that LGBTQ+ people in the EU were being singled out as targets of disinformation by foreign actors — most prominently the Russian government — as a means to sow friction and disunity between EU member states.

A key element of the disinformation playbook is to ‘other’ certain groups in society - setting them apart by attributing negative characteristics. We see this when trans people get labeled as pedophiles or climate activists as eco-terrorists, or politicians as sex workers. But there is more that connects climate and gender disinformation campaigns than may meet the eye. This month, our blog dives into that connection. Read it here.

The good news is that while disinformation is rampant, so are organizations and groups fighting it. Cathleen Berger and Joachim Rother created a searchable list of over 200 organizations monitoring and fact checking disinformation globally, searchable by country and theme here. Often, just simply being aware of disinformation and how to spot it can help most people become immune to it. Awareness of disinformation strategies before they shows up on your youtube or X feed can act as a sort of “inoculation”.  But in this day and age, it’s useful for all of us to remember to check our sources, and question very strongly where our information is coming from, who is funding it, and to what end.

Join the conversation - our recommended deep dives this month

Listen: This Interview with Catherine McKenna, the Canadian minister of the environment who quit office because of anti-gender climate denialism attacks.

Read: The gendered disinformation playbook in Germany is a warning for Europe  a commentary by Kristina Wilfore, an international global democracy and disinformation specialist and co-founder of #ShePersisted focusing on gendered disinformation during Germany’s 2020 elections.

Check Out: Launched in 2017 by Claire Provost, the U.K.-based openDemocracy feminist investigative project “Tracking the Backlash” (now 50:50)  investigates organized opposition to sexual and reproductive rights from religious right, far-right and other ‘anti-gender’ movements.

Listen:  In der 4. Folge des de:hate Podcasts fragen sie wie Geschlecht, Gender und Sexualität von rechts behandelt werden und was ihnen aus progressiver Perspektive entgegenzusetzen wäre. (In German)

Listen: Trending, The Denial Files/BBC. This series explores how vested interests are adopting new tactics to delay, block, or distract attention from what science says needs to be done

Participate

Join Yarrow in person or online on March 20th for a panel talk on feminist responses to the climate crises with local activists and researchers. More information about the event and how to sign up on eventbrite.