From COP26 to COP27: What does the climate disinformation landscape look like now?

The first edition to our daily bulletin for the COP27 summit is available to access here.

A lot has happened since last year’s UN summit, COP26, and inevitably, this has altered the disinformation landscape we find ourselves in today. In this issue, our analysis is two-fold: first, we briefly review some of the most prominent hubs for ‘discourses of delay’ discovered at COP26, to see how their stances have evolved in the last year; second, we look at key shifts in the geopolitical landscape since the Glasgow last year’s summit and their effect on climate mis- and disinformation. This includes Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the continued fallout from Covid-19, widespread cost of living crises and increased lobbying from petrochemical states around oil and gas.

We welcome requests from journalists, civil society and policymakers to provide evidence where relevant. If you have a lead regarding climate mis-/disinformation, malign influence operations or other suspicious activity, please email [email protected]. All requests will be reviewed from both an ethical and technical perspective, ensuring data is used responsibly to map and counter these threats.

Much of the intel in this bulletin was powered by Beam – an award-winning system developed by CASM Technology and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue to track and confront information threats online. The bespoke climate dashboards used by made available to CAAD collate, enrich, and visualise data from around 3000 actors across climate denial, political, media, industry, influencer and conspiracy ecosystems online, as well as over 250 media outlets worldwide. The system also analyses millions of posts across 4Chan, Facebook, Instagram, MediaCloud, Reddit, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube to capture content broadly related to COP27, as well as discussions around specific policy areas such as Loss and Damage. Complementary tools from Dewey Square Group, CARDS, Graphika and the University of Exeter have provided invaluable analysis in tandem.

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