As global leaders wrap up discussions on climate change at COP28 in Dubai, recipients of International Fact-Checking Network grants for combating climate misinformation used a variety of innovative formats and channels to spread accurate information to the public.
Many of the projects, aimed at reducing the harm of climate falsehoods, began in April 2022, after Poynter’s IFCN, in partnership with Meta, announced the recipients of the $800,000 Climate Misinformation Grant Program.
Nine organizations from seven countries, including Romania, France, the United States, Kenya and India, received up to $100,000. They were selected by a six-member committee of independent climate experts and researchers.
Code for Africa, the parent organization of Kenya-based IFCN signatory PesaCheck, reported that its approach to addressing climate inaccuracies on Wikipedia led to 1,321 corrections across Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikicommons. The organization also established a climate disinformation task force and awarded eight fact-checking fellowships to African journalists, who published 285 fact checks refuting climate denialism during the period.
“‘Bridging the Gap’ significantly contributed to combating climate denialism in Africa through collaborative efforts and capacity building among Wikipedia user groups and journalists,” Code for Africa reported, adding that the grant enabled them to recruit 70 contributors from seven African countries for a campaign against climate denialism.
To flag climate misinformation in podcasts, a particularly challenging format for fact-checkers monitoring false information, Verificat in Spain teamed up with Chequeado in Argentina to listen to more than 5,000 hours of audio content from 32 podcasts. They jointly created “Barcelona en dades”, a platform for monitoring climate and environmental data, and produced 74 fact checks touching on climate change delayism and denialism.
“The ‘Las mentiras intoxican el planeta’ (Lies poison the planet) project made significant strides in identifying, analyzing, and debunking climate misinformation,” Verificat wrote in the final report.
A collaboration between PolitiFact and MediaWise produced 99 fact checks on climate change denialism and conspiracy theories. The fact checks collectively reached more than 700,000 viewers in the United States.
“The collaboration between PolitiFact and MediaWise effectively addressed climate misinformation, reaching a significant audience, particularly the youth,” the two organizations reported.
MediaWise director Alex Mahadevan said the climate misinformation fact checks accounted for 15% of the media literacy initiative’s content posted to TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. He added that MediaWise’s debunk of misleading claims about acid rain reached over 1,000 teachers and students through PBS’s online portals.
From Asia, Fact Crescendo teamed up with Aaranyak to create a “first-of-its-kind” WhatsApp chatbot, named Climate Buddy, to address climate misinformation queries from users in India and Sri Lanka. Together, they produced 536 articles that debunked misleading claims about climate change in the region, with over half of these fact checks being translated into multiple regional languages.
Demagog Association also created an educational chatbot, called Climate Factbot, that reached around 23,000 users in Poland, with more than 400 questions about climate change answered in the chatbot.
ElDetector at Univision, in partnership with López-Wagner Strategies, produced 85 original content pieces that corrected climate change misinformation targeted at the Hispanic community in the United States.
Despite challenges relating to communicating complex climate issues in engaging formats, which nearly all grant recipients reported encountering, ElDetector wrote, “The project’s accomplishments in influencing global narratives and its potential for future growth highlight its broader significance in the fight against climate misinformation.”
The fact-checking desk at USA Today, collaborating with Society Library, saw significant output from their two newly hired journalists, who possess backgrounds in the sciences. These journalists were instrumental in publishing 150 pieces of content aimed at combating false information about climate issues.
“(We) developed a significant library of climate-related debunks, with a focus on addressing climate misinformation and conspiracy theories,” the USA Today team reported.
Fact-checkers at Funky Citizens, who collaborated with InfoClima.ro and the European Network for the Promotion of a Responsible Economy 21st Century for this project, monitored 21 misleading narratives on climate change in Romania. They produced 50 fact checks and 13 prebunking multimedia materials, reaching 600,000 people in the Eastern European country.
France’s Science Feedback, whose project is ongoing, developed a Climate Science Desk, a platform that connects fact-checkers and journalists with experts for a quick review of climate-related claims.