Climate change has been a heated topic on social media, but misinformation can confuse the public and hinder people from the scientific truth. A research team led by Prof. CHU Jianxun et al. from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), studied the semantic features of climate change information dissemination on social media. This work was published in Public Understanding of Science (PUS) in May 2023.

To achieve carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals as well as sustainable development, it is fundamental to raise public scientific awareness of climate change. This helps to promote civic action and ensure the effectiveness of science and technology policies. However, rampant misinformation is one of the main obstacles to social consensus and progress in science and technology. How to efficiently identify social media misinformation on climate change is an important issue for academics and enterprises.

The study selected climate change texts on Weibo from 2010 to 2020 as the subject of the study to explore the effectiveness of textual latent semantic features in identifying disinformation. The results show that posts involving environmental and health impacts, science and technology, beliefs and perceptions, and non-specific authority references are effective predictors of disinformation in climate change discussions.

To enhance public scientific literacy and provide a more benign space for online interaction in climate change discussions, the study makes feasible recommendations to address the identification of disinformation in climate communication and the lack of public scientific awareness of climate change.

(Written by JIANG Zhimo, editted by SHU Yukang, USTC News Center)