S14, Ep4 | The Media As a Tool of Climate Obstruction

Amy Westervelt: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to Drilled. I am Amy Westervelt. In this season, we are going chapter by chapter of a great new book that pulls together all of the social science that we have so far– peer reviewed social science — on climate obstruction globally. It's called Climate Obstruction, a Global Assessment.

It's been pulled together by the Climate Social Science Network at Brown, which includes hundreds of social scientists working all over the world on trying to understand this issue. Today we are digging into a subject that is near and dear to my heart, the role of PR and media in climate obstruction.

And to do that, I'm joined by two people who have been guests on this show before. Melissa Aronczyk at Rutgers University and Max Boykoff from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

We had a great conversation about the role that media plays, both in helping to shape the public's understanding of climate and therefore the role it can play in obstruction, especially if it is targeted by bad faith actors, which it often is.

It was a super interesting conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. That's coming up right after this quick break.

Max Boykoff: My name is Max Boykoff. I'm a professor here in Environmental Studies and a fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder in the us.

Melissa Aronczyk: I am Melissa Aronczyk. I'm a professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University in New jersey.

Amy Westervelt: So, I've probably talked to both of you about this separately before, but, it does seem to me that the media often avoids responsibility for climate obstruction or for playing any kind of a role in it.

I think you show really clearly here how it's kind of been used as a tool. So I wanna kind of start by having you explain how particularly the weaponization of this journalistic norm of balanced reporting has contributed to the disparity between scientific consensus and the public's understanding of [00:03:00] climate change.

Max Boykoff: Yeah, I'm happy to start us off if you'll allow me to back out just a little bit to answer that question. I think if we look back through time, we, can track and our group. The Media and Climate Change Observatory has done this where we've tracked media coverage of climate change over time, and it really came into public consciousness and into the news starting in the late 1980s.

And, um, when that was happening, it was a new story to tell and there were a lot of different, uh, journalists and actors trying to make sense of what was going on and how to tell these stories. And as time went on though, there was, you know, in the late 1980s was the establishment of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

There was increasing understanding within the scientific community that humans contribute to climate change. And so from that period of time journalism as we've tracked it through various studies, had tried to make sense of that.

And [00:04:00] as they did that and as they started to draw on expert voices and others to give them a sense of where, science was on human contributions to climate change, journalists leaned back into their journalistic norms, including the journalistic norm of balanced reporting, which is to get one perspective, to get another and help the reader, the viewer, the listener, make sense of what's going on.

And so some early research that I had done with my brother Jules Boycott, who's at Pacific University in Political Science, we had just taken a look at how had US Media been covering it from that time in the late 1980s through, at that 200 two, when we finished up the study. And while there had been that convergent agreement in the scientific community.

And that had been communicated clearly through the intergovernmental panel on climate change assessments that we had found that the journalistic community had continued to tell this quote unquote balanced story. And, and in so [00:05:00] doing had perpetrated an informational bias and actually skewed the conversations, uh, in the public arena.

And, you know, part of the reason that we make those claims and then others have also been looking at this over time, is that, you know, quite frankly, people don't pick up peer reviewed literature. The IPCC assessment reports, they rely on news coverage to help make sense of what's going on around them.

And so news become this important bridge and this powerful driver of public conversation.

There has been a learning going on, a maturation or just sort of an integration of new understanding within the journalistic community. So we had put out that study, it actually gained traction. Um, it ended up in Al Gore's and Inconvenient Truth just briefly mentioned.

So it got a lot more attention and journalists, some were very eager to think carefully and recalibrate how they're telling these stories through, um, their own [00:06:00] reporting. Others, you know, weren't quite as, receptive to that messaging and critique. But nonetheless, you know, we did some follow-up work years later and found that that coverage had improved it, you know, when we looked it's with, another collection of.

Researchers here led by Lucy McAllister. When we looked at it again in 2021, we found that there had been tremendous improvements in US press, along with uk, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand, um, newspapers. But there it still isn't a hundred percent. And so, you know, the way in which we went about it to look at the unit of analysis being each newspaper article, we can still see there's room for improvement.

But if somebody's picking up the paper and reading a very influential piece that, that isn't accurate, that is still, falling, whether unwittingly or wittingly to, this sort of quote unquote balanced reporting that they themselves then start to get a skewed view still to this very day.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, I don't know if [00:07:00] I've, um, ever told either or maybe both of you this story, but I had, I had this experience directly with, um, I was a stringer at the Washington Post for a while and like, because of where I lived, that meant covering a lot of wildfires. And, um, I went, I covered a fire once and the Cal Fire Chief told me, give me this like, very simple explanation for why fires were burning for so much longer now than they had. And this was, I mean, this wasn't that long ago. This was probably like 2015 ish. And um, and he said, you know, you know, are you from California? I said, yes. And he said, well, you probably remember when you were growing up that you would like go to bed at night and a fire would be 20% contained and you'd wake up in the morning and it would be like 60% contained or, or at least 50.

And I said, yeah, that was, that was the norm, you know? And he said, yeah, that's how it used to work. Because it would get cool and humidity would increase at night. And now that doesn't happen anymore. So these fires are burning. The same [00:08:00] intensity 24 7. And that's why they're getting so big and that's climate change.

And I was like, wow, what a great, like, simple way to understand that. And I put it in the story and my editor, who at the time was the national editor of the Washington Post, um, suggested taking out the part where he said, that's climate change because, and his comment was, this is a wildfire story, not a politics story.

Max Boykoff: Huh.

Amy Westervelt: I said, I it like I'd been a climate reporter for a long time. So I like, knew enough to kind of push back on that and say, well, you know, that's an industry talking point. There's nothing political about what he's saying, you know, and he let, he like, you know, listened to me and let me keep it in. But the average person that's just like getting sent off to, you know, cover a flood a fire is not necessarily gonna feel confident, you know, saying.

You're wrong. It's not political, but like, you know, I don't think that that guy was being hounded by Exxon every day. It was just like so ingrained in [00:09:00] him that like, I don't know. I think of it every time I think about this 'cause its such, it was such a simple way that that stuff like creeps in.

Max Boykoff: Yeah.

Amy Westervelt: yeah. Yeah. Anyway, um, okay. So obviously the media is not coming up with this stuff on their own, what entities are working to serve up misleading climate narratives to the media or ensure that, people who are like spokespeople for the industry or who carry water for them in their ideas are given a voice in the media.

Melissa Aronczyk: Well, are you asking Amy about public relations firms, ad agencies

Amy Westervelt: like the, the like broad ecosystem of like people that are approaching the media with these narratives or talking points I would think of PR firms, maybe like internal PR folks at companies. Think tanks I think are doing a fair bit, you know, [00:10:00] that whole ecosystem.

What does it look like?

Melissa Aronczyk: well, one thing we need to think about is the network of influence that's really something that has taken us a while to really get our thinking around. And, I think, you know, we're still finding connections that we didn't really know existed, which is kind of amazing. At least since the 1970s, we have started to see connections among not just media platforms and, people who set the agenda in the media, but think tanks, research centers, private donors, lobbyists and lawyers, PR firms. We are starting to get better and better evidence of this network, and both journalists and researchers are uncovering just how far back these relationships of denial go. But I do think it's also important to [00:11:00] remember that we're, you know, all of those groups I just mentioned operate in society and that society in general.

And really, you know, if we just, again, zoom out from fossil fuels per se and just look at our entire consumer society, uh, the way our lifestyles are set up right now, , the status quo is, is one in which fossil fuels play a very big role. And it's very hard for people to imagine alternatives, uh, especially when we don't see a lot of presentation of those alternatives in public communication. So it's, it's a very vast and really has been for a long time, very intractable problem that we've been trying to, to work through.

Max Boykoff: Yes, definitely. I mean, we can draw links directly from, through the structures of, from who owns a lot of the corporate media.

Amy Westervelt: Mm-hmm.

Max Boykoff: Um, but then also as you're mentioning Melissa, just the, the pr the [00:12:00] way that these firms are so influential, the way they play roles in the network, developing strategy. We really get immersed if you're watching commercial television just with all kinds of, uh, marketing and imagery and, and assertions that can at times be seen as, as greenwashing.

But then on, on top of that, you know, at, at the very core. We don't, you know, we're primed to fall into this because we've got a lot of other things that we wanna, um, focus in on. We don't wanna have to worry about it. And so when this sort of apparatus, when it flows through courses, through the veins of our lives, we take it, we're ready for it.

We just say, all right, let's, let's, um, focus in on other things. And so, uh, this apparatus gives us that opportunity to not have to face it.

Amy Westervelt: it. Yeah. You mentioned four key contrarian viewpoints that are amplified by the media, and I wonder if I could have you name those and talk [00:13:00] about how you, or the research that you were looking at, honed in on those four.

Melissa Aronczyk: Yeah, one, one really influential source for thinking about these four viewpoints, these kind of arguments for climate delay comes from the scholar, William Lamb and collaborators. It's in the academic journal, global sustainability, and it's, it's really become a go-to source for a lot of us. I, they have this fantastic chart, which summarizes the arguments, so it's, it's very useful.

So, um, the first, argument for climate delay is to suggest that someone else should take actions first, so in other words, redirecting responsibility for the problem away from themselves, which in this case would often be a fossil fuel company onto somebody else. So the classic one is suggesting that consumers themselves, individuals themselves. Should take actions to address climate change, you know, recycle, for instance. The second argument has to do with [00:14:00] saying that we can't mitigate climate change. It's simply not possible. You have to just kind of give in to the fact that it's never gonna happen. You've seen a lot of arguments like that, especially by, climate deniers saying, you know, change is, is just impossible.

We can't change our current way of life. Um, we can't do that. Or saying it's basically a catastrophe and, you know, doom and bloom apocalypse there, there's nothing to be done. There's a third argument, which is actually a little more insidious where, fossil fuel companies will push non transformative solutions.

That's how, lamb and his collaborators put it. And you know, this one's insidious because it seems like solutions are just around the corner. But in fact, these solutions are very problematic and often, really backwards. One would be to say, future technologies are gonna solve the problem. So, you know, we don't have to worry now because in the future we'll have AI solving climate change.

You know, these kind of very vague, very always future [00:15:00] focused ideas for how the problem will be solved. Another one is to say you can't restrict or regulate companies because then they won't be able to come up with solutions for climate change. So you have to kind of give them time to figure it out. Yet again, this future facing solutionism. Again, these are problematic because they seem like, back to what Max was saying a moment ago. They, they seem to make us feel better and they make us feel like we don't have to do anything that, you know, companies have it.

It's kind of the opposite from the redirect responsibility frame. Anyway and then the last one is about, emphasizing all of the problems with the solutions that are being proposed that are viable. So for instance, you've got a solution in mind, which involves. Social justice. But you know, that means that vulnerable members of our society might have to bear the brunt of, the solutions. So we can't do that. We need solutions [00:16:00] that, that work for everyone, otherwise we shouldn't have solutions at all. So these discourse types, so to be fancy, shows this tendency among, um, actors of disinformation to actually move away from overt denial.

Like moving away from saying climate change isn't happening, it's not real. And having more subtle tactics to just undo or, um, delegitimate climate solutions just by saying that they're not gonna work for a variety of reasons.

Max Boykoff: It could be a good opportunity to, just to point out that Melissa and I were leading on this, this chapter where we were essentially pulling together a lot of the current research to help us understand how this discourse is being steered through news, social media, advertising, public relations, and we led on this chapter, but Trav, Trav Cone, may Lawson, Hannah Morris, and Chris Russell also contributed to this.

So as a great opportunity for [00:17:00] us to pull together this kind of research from William Lamb and colleagues and others to help provide a bit more of a cogent picture.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Yeah. I love that study, the graphic that they made. It's so simple, but like, it's so helpful. Okay. So, uh, you mentioned social media there. Obviously the media itself has gone through, quite a few pretty big transitions over the last couple decades. How have those transitions contributed to the ability of corporations and PR firms and these other entities that you've mentioned, , to really kind of hijack the narrative even more, or, push even legacy media to kind of amplify these sorts of talking points.

Melissa Aronczyk: Well, it will be no surprise to anyone if I say that in the Western Hemisphere, at least in the global North, our media are in crisis, especially news media [00:18:00] and even more in trouble are legacy news media such as, uh, radio and newspapers, which are dealing with economic and political crises, as well as extreme political polarization, which has shattered the sense among a lot of the public that our news outlets provide fact-based and reliable information. That's kind of the current picture, but it has been quite a while now that oil and gas producers and their collaborators have actively worked with both legacy news and social media platforms as well as PR firms and advertising agencies to promote disinformation, that obstructs climate policy. Um, max talked about the news balance, but we've also seen how oil and gas companies do source building with journalists to promote, uh, their industry point of view [00:19:00] and news coverage. Um, but then of course we also have social media where there's less of an intermediary or gatekeeping function. So oil and gas companies can pretty much post whatever they want. Um, not to mention, you know, blogs, instant messaging. And because our mainstream media is. Under corporate control. And because their business model needs advertising revenue to stay afloat, it has also become harder and harder for news to remain separate from promotional content. Um, I don't, you know, there's even more we could say, we talk about this in the chapter for the book.

We have these newer kinds of threats with emerging digital technologies and social media, because now disinformation campaigns can operate at a massive scale and scope. They can target, certain groups much more precisely. You have technology companies and their platforms that let [00:20:00] powerful actors shape information in ways that lack accountability. On top of everything else, we have the explosion of artificial intelligence, which is changing by the day and is incredibly difficult to detect and predict, not to mention the environmental costs of ai, use the, the energy consumption generated by ai, the waste generated by AI systems, uh, especially data centers, which contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution.

So we've got like a, I was gonna say a triple threat, but I think this is like a octoPal threat.

Max Boykoff: Yeah, there are definitely several dynamics that play in there pointing in discouraging directions. I mean, as you've pointed out, Melissa, that there's been increasing consolidation. Some of the media mergers and acquisitions and everything that are going on, just kind of feel beyond us as everyday people.

Skydance is merging with Paramount and what does that mean for Colbert and what does that mean for the news? I get it's getting [00:21:00] just, uh, bigger and bigger all the time. As we look around, we can see that our local independent news are strained. Just some of the recent decisions from the Trump administration, um, have put even further strain on these news sources.

And so we've, across this country, across the world, we've got many news deserts. So people are increasingly reliant on these corporate media sources to make sense of what's going on in the world. And that's through legacy media. As Melissa's pointed out. Once you get into social media, it gets even more confusing with algorithms and, and the blending.

Even some of your work, Amy has, has found its way into our chapter where you've pointed out this confusion that can take place between straight news reporting and some advertising that's going on, from these carbon based industry, uh, players. And so while there are definitely a lot of dynamics at play, it's discouraging and challenging.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, I wonder if you've looked at or if there's any [00:22:00] research yet, or if it's maybe too early on this around the way that influencers are sort of replacing reporters.

Like I see this all the time, even I have an intern right now who, who's like, do you know this guy? Blah, blah, blah. I get all my news from him and I looked him up and he's like, one of these people who sort of reads headlines, in videos, which is all well and good, except that like if those people end up getting all the funding and all the audience, then there won't be any reporters.

Writing the stuff for them to read anymore, you know? I just see this huge shift in I guess like the credibility that people are ascribing to influencers for what appears to be no rhyme or reason. It's not like these people are like, Hey, listen to me.

I'm very credible for these reasons. It's just like some random guy. Anyway, yeah, I don't know if, if you [00:23:00] guys have looked at that, but it's freaking me out.

Melissa Aronczyk: I, you know, that problem first became really clear to me when I was teaching an undergraduate class on media and politics a few years ago, and we had this assignment that I gave them where I said. The student had to identify the source of the media they were looking at, and their answers were things like Facebook

or, well, probably not Facebook, because no, nobody under the age of 25 looks at Facebook, but you know, social media we're, we're listed as the source for these students. And I said, no, no, I don't mean where you saw it. I mean the original source. And they really didn't know what I was talking about. And that's when it hit me that the way our media platforms are organized, the way we access information online is really not the way we, people of my generation used to access or understand it. So the source is not [00:24:00] nearly as relevant to younger people, uh, as the content itself and the way it's presented so that, you know, if we're talking about a space where influencers come to have a lot more. Credibility that really does have to do with what's getting put in front of people. And that in itself has to do with how algorithms work, um, and how prior usage patterns work and how, the location of the individual works.

We, we know about all of these data points that inform what kind of information is, is put in front of people. And so an influencer who might have gotten your attention at some other time for some other completely different topic, suddenly seems like somebody much more reliable and trustworthy than a source you don't know. And that proximity in time and

space to you

is Really problematic when it comes to information about complex scientific.

and highly polarized [00:25:00] issues like climate change.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Yeah.

Max Boykoff: Yeah, I'm finding that too with students. I work with my kids as they're getting older. You know, they'll say, oh, news sources is, uh, news sources, is YouTube news sources is TikTok.

Amy Westervelt: TikTok.

Max Boykoff: And, um, so my, my experiences have been similar and that's a demographic shift that, that we ought to be talking more about. Um, but on top of that, I'd say relevant to, you know, what, what we're talking about here as well is that there's been documentation that now oil companies have been hiring these TikTok influencers, court young people. They are the pathways forward. And, and so the savvy PR firms, advertising firms, carbon based industry actors themselves are getting into this. So what you're, what we're sensing together is definitely something that's deliberate and that is going on.

Melissa Aronczyk: that's right.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. You had some really, really interesting references to new research around this, kind of [00:26:00] persistent intersection between a certain type of conservative identity and climate contrarianism. I know the first paper I ever read on that, that I still love, 'cause I think it's the funniest title ever, is the Cool Dude's Paper from mc Wright and Dunlap.

Melissa Aronczyk: Mm-hmm.

Amy Westervelt: But you have some really new stuff that's really interesting. I would love to have you guys just unpack that, and why this is such a persistent connection between this particular identity and climate Contrarianism,

Max Boykoff: We do get into some of the contours of what's been developing more recently, newer research that, um, work. There's, there's a whole group of work by Riley Dunlap and Aaron Mccr that's been really influential and really pathbreaking, um, in the early days of getting a handle on who are these climate contrarians, what are their motives, how are they effectively obstructing climate action, climate [00:27:00] policy, action, greater engagement.

And when you refer to that, Amy, or the cool dudes piece just refers to maybe colloquially older white guys who are very influential in these spaces. And some of them, you know, are, um, micro blogging on Twitter, X, even blue sky and others Mastodon for a little bit there. They're, you know, sometimes maybe just sitting in their basements, in their comfortable suburban homes.

And, these folks demographically may not be at the forefront of climate impacts like many others. And so there's been research that's followed on theirs. I've done some myself where I've gone to the Heartland Institute meetings about a decade apart and sought to make sense of who they are, what are their motivations.

So that finds its way into our chapter. Another kind of layer of this is that we've, we've documented in this chapter a lot of good research that's been done, that's been tracking how it is much more evident and influential within certain countries with ties to fossil [00:28:00] fuel industry. Um, and. Reliance on fossil fuels.

Matthew Hornsey and colleagues have done some really good work that compares and contrasts these discourses across countries. So there's places like the United States where the belly of the beast in a certain way. Um, the UK, Australia, certain elements of Brazil around food consumption and fossil fuels, they have much more vocal and, um, I guess legible, audible, uh, climate contrarian groups, collections, which can be, you know, caca at times.

But the overall goals of distracting, delaying, denying the facts and the evidence around this. Uh, there are through lines there.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, totally. I didn't realize there was actual research on this that amongst the developed countries or more developed countries, that the UK and the US really stand out as being places where media really continues to give a platform [00:29:00] to climate skepticism.

So again, I'd love to have you kind of talk about the research on that and share your thoughts on why that might be.

Melissa Aronczyk: I do think a big part. Of that, just, you know, again, I think we have to understand the background or the, the structural or systemic issue here. So I, I do think a big part of that has to do with the ownership structure of so many news outlets in the UK and the US and who's, so the question of who owns the media becomes really salient here. But another issue that affects the way we think about how the UK and the US stand out, uh, as giving a, a, a platform for skepticism is simply that there's a lot more research out there about the UK and the US than about other parts of the world. So it's not just that American and British media platforms enable skepticism, which they do, but that we know much more about it there than we do about what's going on in other places.

And I, I really wanna underline [00:30:00] that as a, a very big challenge when you are writing, uh, as we did for, as sorry, a contribution to this book, a global assessment of climate obstruction. It just, I think one takeaway that we had from working on this chapter was that we really need better and more sustained research all over the world to recognize how some of the climate skeptic frames and platforms and styles are being exported to other parts of the world, or how we are getting imported from other parts of the world, various kinds of climate skepticism, but we just don't know as much as we need to in, in some of parts of the world.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, we've been working more and more with reporters in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, and especially in Uganda and Tanzania. I was really surprised at how much it had been like, really drilled into them. The, like very old school false equivalents thing, you know, of like if you quote a [00:31:00] scientist about climate change, then you have to talk to, I don't know, the government person in charge of petroleum contracts or something too, you know?

Melissa Aronczyk: Something that one of our co-authors, Mayana Lawson has been really focusing on that relates to this question, which is about how, um, emerging analyses of climate coverage in, places like Brazil might make few references to climate skepticism, but that could be because they're not focusing on fossil fuel emissions, but they are focusing on things like carbon pollution from agriculture or other land use practices. So I think that's just something else to keep in mind when we are talking about climate skepticism. It might, sometimes it, certain stories might fall outside of the purview of research on climate skepticism, but it, it is climate skepticism. It just might look different in the news piece.

Max Boykoff: Yeah, Melissa, you make great points. And just [00:32:00] from referencing Mayana, that's, she's an example of, you know, she has been really influential in helping tell these stories out of Brazil. And, uh, we need many more researchers like Mayana and others to come together, um, so that we can tell these stories more comprehensively. So this book itself, you know, our chapter contribution to it, the larger project is trying to take a step forward in more systematically understanding how these dynamics play out in various, um, times and spaces and that, but it is stunning, you know, given the amount of funding and, capacity that there is within these PR agencies, within advertising, within news reporting, that that shapes the stories that we get on a daily basis, um, that we don't have a, a larger, more coordinated effort to understand all these dynamics from a social sciences perspective, from humanities and how that relates to the natural physical sciences.

Amy Westervelt: The most recent [00:33:00] IPCC report was the first to include social scientists and the first to really note this stuff as a huge blocker to policy action.

And Max, I know I've talked to you about this before, um, so I won't have you repeat like an hour's worth of stuff, but, I just am curious like why do you think it took so long for, the IPCC to start looking at this as part of the problem?

Max Boykoff: Yeah, I think it is a good question. As we've grown to understand more about climate change, it's not a single issue. We're increasingly recognizing that it's a set of intersecting challenges that that flow through every aspect of our lives, meeting our livelihood needs and everything else. Um, and in so doing, we need to understand it from not just.

Physical, biological perspectives, but also human behavior perspectives. And there have been social scientists that have come on board and been a part of some of the [00:34:00] previous IPCC reports, but this really was a big step forward with some of us that were invited along. So I was a contributing, uh, author to that most recent IPCC report.

And so when you ask that question, I mean, I think the kind of simple answer is, um, because there were folks like me and me included to bring the very thoroughly researched work that. We're talking about this chapter in this larger book into the pages of the IPCC. Um, but I think a bigger part of that is just that more, uh, folks from different disciplines seeing this as an integrative interdisciplinary set of challenges are being invited in to help provide those insights through the thoroughly researched work that's going on out there.

And so it is a step forward. You know, they're, they're selecting authors for the next one. We could possibly debate for a full hour about the wisdom of another big assessment report years off, while we need to do a lot in the interim. But having said that, they're selecting [00:35:00] authors for the next one. I hope that continues to flow into these, um, pages and, and the work that, that we talk about in the chapter that we capture.

That's in the. Larger reports themselves actually didn't make it into the, the, um, summary for policymakers. And that too, we could talk about for quite a while. But there's still a lot of work to do to make this much more legible and to make this a larger conversation through the IPCC.

Amy Westervelt: Okay. Melissa, I feel like this gonna be your big question, which is about the, the PR firms, I love this description of them as sort of the, the glue joining carbon based industries, media organizations, and economic sectors using coalitions, campaigns and other coordinated processes to question the efficacy of science, news and political institutions engaging climate related issues.

Again, this is one I know you could. Spend, many hours talking about. But, can I have you give a little bit of an overview of the role that PR firms play here? And if you wanna [00:36:00] talk about advertising firms too, that's fine. Maybe the difference between them. 'cause I feel like they get conflated a lot.

Maybe there's not that much difference between them anymore. I dunno. Anyway, over to you.

Melissa Aronczyk: yeah. So the most important thing I learned when I started researching the role of ad agencies and PR firms in climate disinformation is that these firms are not just mouthpieces for their fossil fuel clients. They are coming up with the strategies. They are creating messages. They are developing the relationships with news media and other organizations who are friendly to their cause. For a long time, climate researchers only focused on the fossil fuel companies themselves, and that was relevant and necessary. So we now have a lot more information about what Exxon does or what Shell does, or what BP does. But lately journalists and researchers have started paying [00:37:00] a lot more attention to the consultants and strategists who come up with the positioning for these fossil fuel companies and who play key roles in managing these companies, media image and their marketing and strategic plan. I do wanna mention that there, there is a very important pioneer of this kind of research whose, uh, name is John Alber of the Center for Media and Democracy in Wisconsin. Um, he founded that center back in 1993 and in 1995. He wrote this book, which I think has the, the best name, uh, that any book like this could have, which is called Toxic Sludge is Good for You, which was an expose of the PR firms involved in environmental disinformation. And I I mentioned that 'cause that really was a, a very important guide that came out at a time when most of us were looking the other way. Um, it really has helped later researchers and journalists think about this topic. So a second [00:38:00] major finding that we have about the role of PR firms and ad agencies in climate disinformation is that these firms are embedded in a very wide ecosystem of influence.

We mentioned this a little earlier in our conversation, but just important to remember, PR firms and ad agencies are doing work for not only fossil fuel companies, but also their trade associations, industry councils, and science advisory council. For think tanks and research institutes, NGOs, foundations, chambers of commerce, organizational boards, I mean the list, the list goes on. And the important thing that really came to me is that these firms play several roles in keeping this network together. This is the glue part. Uh, one of the things that these PR firms and other consultants do is, uh, intelligence gathering across different industries as well as inside the [00:39:00] environmental community. So you'll have PR firms hiring people who used to work at government agencies working on environmental issues, or from other organizations that influence public policy on environment, uh, or climate and energy issues. Another thing these PR firms will do is conduct industry friendly research that help clients promote their viewpoints in the media. So there's a massive production of scientific material, legal material, and technical material to circulate in the media. So, like you said, Amy, I could really go on for several more hours about this, but I just really want to communicate that these, these firms are not just about spin. There's so much more going on and they, they deserve all of the attention that we've been trying to give to them over the last few years.

Max Boykoff: Melissa's written a lot of great, um, written up a lot of great [00:40:00] research on this Anna book that is worth checking out for all your listeners.

Amy Westervelt: Yes.

Max Boykoff: you know, just to maybe animate this with a very recent example, you know, Edelman big influential ad agency that's, um, helped promote fossil fuels with various companies is as, clients has just been hired by COP 30 in Brazil to help with the strategy there.

And so these things are happening and circulating all the time.

Amy Westervelt: the time. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I was just reading about that. , Okay. We talked a little bit about social media and digital, but can I have you hone in on the digital platforms in particular and sort of structurally what is going on with them, with respect to spreading disinformation around and what are people trying to do about it?

Melissa Aronczyk: So. I, I mean, yes. Digital platforms are very troubling sources of climate disinformation. In fact, some have [00:41:00] argued that digital platforms are actually completely complicit in spreading climate denial because they do such a terrible job of monitoring the content, uh, on their sites in the name of sense. You know, they wanna avoid so-called censorship. Uh, or they say they're just technology companies and not media companies. So they're not responsible for the content on their sites. Uh, they also take ads from fossil fuel companies. Uh, we have one report we talk about in the chapter that estimates that Google alone receive $23.7 million between 2020 and 2022 from the five largest oil companies in the world to promote their advertising. Um, we can also really level our sites at Meta, um, slash Facebook, um, which has overridden its own independent fact checkers for climate science. Um, it has also allowed fossil fuel [00:42:00] companies to purchase misleading ads. And, uh, another real problem that is posed by companies like Facebook is that they have a data sharing tool called Crowd Tangle, which is traditionally relied upon by journalists and academics to analyze, uh, engagement with content on the platform. And they keep tweaking the data sharing tools so that it's less transparent and less useful for journalists and academics. So you, it's very hard to get a long term, uh, view of how engagement is changing over time, and it's very difficult to understand all the demographics and other data points that researchers need. So it's, yeah, it's, so, it's, yeah. It's, it's really, it really feels like the Wild West. Um, there's a, a group called Climate Action Against Disinformation cad, uh, which has done a lot of really interesting, uh, research in this area. [00:43:00] And they've talked about how really the four big platforms of TikTok, meta YouTube, and X have become complicit in the spread of climate denial. Uh, and they put x uh, out of those four last among platforms because of their absolute total absence of policies on climate disinformation, um, failing to, uh, effectively enforce whatever policies they do have, and total lack of public transparency.

Max Boykoff: That's a pretty comprehensive answer. I mean,

Amy Westervelt: Yeah,

Melissa Aronczyk: Pretty bad.

Max Boykoff: I sit here listening to what you've, you've laid out, Melissa, I mean, even if we were to say there's no deliberate, mal intent with all these big companies, even just as you had pointed out the absence of policies on disinformation, the way in which, you know, at the start of the year, Zuckerberg had said that they're getting rid of its fact checking policy and just starting [00:44:00] some community board, um, community notes, I should say, that just the misinformation that proliferates because of the influence of these and the, and the lack of, um, intentional fact checking amongst them is, is really troubling.

Amy Westervelt: I wonder if you both or either of you has a, a response to this, very concerning trend of people recasting fact checking as censorship and like how that plays into this stuff.

Max Boykoff: I may not answer that head on, but I, I think part of how we've then gotten into these places is that, um, people like those within the academic research community haven't advocated adequately for facts and evidence and truths as they, um, come about and. So that is a form of advocacy. It's advocacy of a sort.

It's not advocating for particular policy actions or advocating for certain outcomes. But in the absence [00:45:00] of that, we've allowed ourselves to devolve into this place where fact checking can be seen as, like you say, some kind of censor, some kind of intervention that that is unwanted and that curtails free speech.

I mean, it's where things can turn on their head, but I think I find myself somewhat culpable in, in those within our communities for not advocating more strenuously for facts and evidence and for not, um, helping others better understand these, these, uh, you know, the landscape of how this matters, how facts matter.

Melissa Aronczyk: Maybe Amy, we should talk about rapid attribution. 'cause that's

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, yeah. It does kind of like, um, blend into that. Yeah. What is, what is rapid attribution? Let me have you define it and then like, how could it help with this?

Melissa Aronczyk: Yeah. So I, I heard about this idea through Jill Hal's work. Others have spoken about it, but she, she has a great piece on this topic, the basic [00:46:00] idea behind. Rapid attribution is to respond to misleading media content as quickly as possible. So this has to do with, of course, the incredible speed of the news cycle these days, and the fact that our attention is constantly pulled in a million different directions online. And if you contrast that with the academic research and publication cycle, I mean, there's just no contest. It's our, our research and publication cycle is incredibly slow. We work in, in cycles of years, not cycles of, of minutes. So what some researchers are calling for is a, a monitoring and rapid response service to provide facts to provide accurate information to the public while they're thinking about the issue, not a year or two later. So some have suggested that maybe academic researchers can take a page from nonprofit projects or, or even projects like Max's observatory groups like Max's Observatory, [00:47:00] by working either more, more closely with those groups or working with other research centers to track and analyze digital media and social media disinformation as it happens, and provide a researcher's lens on the response.

Max Boykoff: It reminds me of that old saying of Lie can travel around the world while the truth's putting on its shoes that it is, these are efforts to try and close that feedback loop. They're, they're improving, but even today in say, print news journalism, if something is wrong, they print a correction the next day, it's still not adequate. Um, there are many more efforts that are going on.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Okay. You have, this very interesting section to me about how, how these narratives shape not just people's understanding of, the issues and how urgent they are, but also ambition on climate. And I, I wonder if you could walk through that.

I also wanted to [00:48:00] ask you about, the tendency for a lot of reporters who are on the climate beat to focus on just events based reporting. I feel like that kind of feeds into this too.

Melissa Aronczyk: I'm gonna rephrase your question like the way All good, you know, political, uh,

Amy Westervelt: perfect. You're so media trained, it's great. Yes,

Melissa Aronczyk: because you asked, so I'll answer a piece of what you asked me. So you asked about how do some of the narratives that we see in the media shape, um, people's ambition

to do something about, about climate change. And so here,

there's, There's a variety of climate obstruction that I know really Well.

Um, because I've spent a lot of years studying how big brands and other business groups sidestep their role in contributing to climate change. And this, they, they generate narratives that are very, uh, influential, very seductive, but that, uh, really are problematic.

And they do this by promoting that they're at the table with us, that they're [00:49:00] collaborators, they're consensus makers, or that they're willing to compromise. And in fact, I would say that some of the most effective undermining of environmental science has come from business leaders who say that their company is working alongside scientists or alongside public policy makers to solve climate problems. So here we come, we have to come back to PR specialists because their entire. Um, ette is to promote consensus among public audiences. That's the public in public relations is to relate to the public. Um, they influence people by aligning their client's messages with public values and beliefs. Uh, that's a classic branding strategy, and it's also about creating legitimacy for their client organizations like fossil fuel companies and about creating trust in their message. So, for example, PR consultants will create public private partnerships [00:50:00] or sponsorships for their clients that make them look good. Shell, for instance, uh, the oil company sponsors youth programs. Uh, they sponsor healthcare initiatives and they sponsor housing projects, and that's. Not, it's hard to point to that and say, that's bad.

You shouldn't sponsor those projects. But at the same time, if you think about how that acts back on the company to make them look good, when in fact alongside those sponsorships, they are also expanding the infrastructure for, uh, oil production, it, it becomes really challenging to uphold their, their good image. I could go on, but maybe I could leave it at that for now.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. No, that's great. Did you wanna, um, add anything in there, max?

Max Boykoff: I think it relates back to some of the things we were talking about before Melissa was talking about. Discourses of climate delay and kind of honing in on the four that, that, um, [00:51:00] that William Lamb and colleagues had pointed out that we got in the chapter. And another way in which we can see this kind of narrative is through the way in which some of the redirection of responsibility comes through the individualization of responsibility.

And so some of the narratives that take place through the media and through everyday lives can come into the notion of carbon footprints, which themselves were seen as creations by the fossil fuel industry to redirect attention to the individual rather than larger corporate actors who are contributing significantly to these issues.

And, um, and so that individualization can have several different kind of pushes and pulls. It can distract from their responsibilities, but then it can also, um, you know, very importantly, it. Have us feel like, oh my gosh, we get overwhelmed with the enormity of the challenges that we have before us. And so it can push us into these [00:52:00] spaces of paralysis if we, if we subscribe to this kind of atomized individualized way of acting.

And we also, on top of that, can tend to, you know, start to name and shame and blame one another instead of looking at some of the, the, um, clear facts around us. And so, you know, there's, there's been a lot of work, uh, over time among them was some important work by Richard Heed that points out that two-thirds of industrial greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel use, methane leaks, cement manufacturing, have come from 90 co companies around the world since the dawn of the industrial revolution.

And so this naming and shaming and individualization is both a redirection of responsibility. And then it also, um, really is a very effective technique of delay and distraction.

Amy Westervelt: I wanna end with this accountability piece and, where we're at with accountability measures on this. So we talked about rapid attribution, but you mentioned this push for a universal [00:53:00] definition of climate disinformation in the chapter and then, you know, the potential. For accountability for specific platforms. I'm curious to hear from each of you where you see, the most progress on dealing with this issue.

Melissa Aronczyk: I, I'll just start by saying that the, the call for a universal definition of climate disinformation as well as for more accountability by media platforms came out, I believe in November, 2024, around the COP 29 climate negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan. And this was a, a large group, a coalition of, um, political groups, nonprofits, and, and so on that was trying to. Um, encourage political leaders around the world to acknowledge that there is a major threat posed by climate disinformation as an obstacle to climate action. Um, and to adopt a definition that will allow, uh, [00:54:00] regulation and other forms of rules to get put in place, uh, to, you know, to be able to say, you know, to point at something and say, that is climate disinformation based on this definition that all of us have agreed upon.

I think that that would be very powerful. And then the, that third pillar is to hold platforms accountable, as you said, Amy. So just pushing, um, social media companies, ad tech, uh, publishers to prevent the spread of climate disinformation by again, acknowledging it and, uh, saying we're not gonna allow this kind of garbage to be, to be on our sites. Um, I would say if I had to, you know, leave with some. Hope I, I, this is really not, I don't intend this to be about tooting my own horn. This is just something I know more about than, than other areas. So I'll talk about it. Um, it's, it's, um, in relation to this idea of adopting a universal definition, but it's on the topic of greenwashing, which is a subset of climate disinformation. Um, this is something that some colleagues and I have been [00:55:00] working, uh, pretty steadily on through the climate Social science network. We have a, a greenwashing working group, and we've just put out our second article that attempts to develop a very clear and coherent framework to identify, uh, greenwashing and to lay out a set of criteria that anyone can use.

It's not just an academic thing. It's really about saying, here are the features. Now, you know, if you can identify these features in. Whatever you're looking at, um, that you think is greenwashing and these features are there, you can, you can call it greenwashing. You can go ahead and say that's greenwashing. And we are really trying to promote greater accountability by all kinds of organizations. Not not just companies, but other groups that, um, inadvertently or inadvertently, um, produce greenwashing material and just, just, yeah. Getting, getting a, a definition that then will allow us to hold these groups accountable.

And we, we've had some real success with that, uh, framework. [00:56:00] We've had a couple of, uh, groups I know in, um. Uh, Canadian cities, the, some, um, lawmakers have used that framework to, uh, ask for public buses and, uh, other, um, transit systems to take down their, uh, advertising that is greenwashing as a, as a result of our study.

So that's just one, you know, very small contribution to trying to just keep these, uh, different platforms and different outlets accountable.

Max Boykoff: That's great. I'm glad, glad to hear those developments because they can feed back into news reporting, into pro um, engagement advertising and, and on and on. I guess I would say that, you know, while we have talked about how, you know, there are strains on our media literacy nowadays. Um. Generally, my experience has been that once you open up these conversations, especially with young college aged people that I'm working with a lot, teaching that there is a real, [00:57:00] um, appetite and there's an ability to learn very quickly and, um, especially young people who have been born into the world where we've already had this on the public agenda for those of us that are a little bit older.

You know, we grew up in a world where this wasn't being discussed, but many young people now that are in college have, have been exposed to this, been talking about it, and they're well positioned to start to move forward with, um, solutions. And, and I know at times we all may feel like this is really daunting.

There are so many, um, large forces and pressures that are working against this kind of progress. I guess I am in a quoting kind of mood. I think about West Jackson. Um, something he said about if you're not working on something that you plan on finishing in your lifetime, you're not thinking big enough.

And so when we start to work with folks across demographics, across generations, and there is this appetite to learn, there is this appetite for positive change. I see it through the creative ways that, that, um, students I'm working with are communicating about [00:58:00] climate change with their peers and families and neighbors and roommates that I find that as a source of encouragement.

So while we have been focused in here on diagnosing some of the real daunting challenges, there are places where we can look to for encouragement and hope.

Amy Westervelt: Awesome.

Melissa Aronczyk: No, it's true. And I really, I really, I echo what Max was saying about students. I do see When I the only moments lately when I do feel optimistic are actually working with my students. And hanging out with my teen, uh, son,

Amy Westervelt: yeah, yeah.

Melissa Aronczyk: you know, which is kind of ironic because in other ways he drives me absolutely bananas, BUT he is, he is, you know, he's growing up to be a very savvy and media literate person. despite what we were saying earlier. He is Very aware. Of the climate crisis and the need to do something about it. I feel hopeful when I hear the kinds of things that he's thinking about and wanting to do when it comes to climate change 'cause he, he's on it. And I think his, his friends and roommates and, [00:59:00] and others are too.

Amy Westervelt: Okay. Well, it's kind of nice to end on a, a little bit of, hope and grit. I do feel like people really forget that these things take a long time.