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Climate Change Disinformation Glossary
This section gives you clear, accessible definitions of the key terms, techniques, strategies, and actors often found at the core of climate disinformation or climate influence campaigns.
AI Hallucinations
AI hallucinations refer to instances where generative AI or computer vision systems produce incorrect or misleading results. These errors can stem from factors such as insufficient or biased training data, leading the AI to make inaccurate predictions or generate false information.
Algorithm
Algorithms are used to perform calculations and data processing. On Social Media Platforms, algorithms select the content that users see based on calculations and data processing.
Alternative media
Alternative media refers to media outlets such as newspapers, radio stations, or online platforms that are independent from large corporate ownership and often present political messages or narratives not commonly found in mainstream media.
Big Oil
The term Big Oil refers to major publicly traded and investor-owned oil and gas companies. The term is used to emphasize their economic power and influence.
Big Tech
"Big Tech" refers to the largest and most influential technology companies worldwide, including Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Alibaba, Microsoft, and Tencent.
Bot
A bot is a software program designed to perform automated tasks. Bots can carry out simple or complex actions without human intervention, such as sharing content or interacting with content on social media.
Botnet
A botnet is a group of infected devices with one or more bots that connect to a central point for instructions. Botnets are used for spamming, phishing, scamming, identity theft, collection of sensitive data and, attacking websites or networks.
Carbon Footprint
The carbon footprint measures the total greenhouse gas emissions caused by an activity, product, company, or country, usually reported in tonnes of CO₂ per year. The term carbon footprint was coined by Ogilvy & Mather, a New York–based British advertising firm while working for British Petroleum (BP).
Citizen Journalism
Citizen journalism (also: collaborative media, guerilla journalism, grassroots journalism, street journalism) describes community-centred journalism. Members of the community actively collect, analyze, and report news and information.
Climate Disinformation
Climate disinformation is the intentional dissemination of false or inaccurate information about climate change or climate action.
Climate Misinformation
Climate misinformation is the unintentional dissemination of false or inaccurate information about climate change and climate action. It is generally spread without malicious intent and often arises from misunderstandings, misinterpretation of information or data, or simply outdated knowledge.
Conspiracy Theory
A conspiracy theory is a belief that an event or situation is the result of secret, often sinister actions by a powerful group, and it typically rejects mainstream or widely accepted explanations.
Community notes
It is a community-driven content moderation program intended to provide fact-checking services through a crowdsourced system.
Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret or seek out information in ways that confirm one’s existing beliefs or ideologies, while ignoring or dismissing contradictory evidence.
Content moderation
Content moderation is the process of reviewing and managing user-generated content on digital platforms to ensure it complies with platform policies regarding what is allowed or prohibited. It can be performed manually or automatically through algorithms.
Climate change denial
Climate change denial is the belief or claim that climate change is not happening or is not caused by human activity, such as burning fossil fuels. This viewpoint contradicts scientific consensus and often opposes actions aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change.
CIB
Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour (CIB) refers to a communication tactic with the purpose of harassing, harming and misleading online debates around crucial societal issues. The manipulative communication tactic makes use of social media accounts across multiple social media platforms.
Clickbait
The term refers to a headline, text or picture with an attention-grabbing rhetoric and design. This is used to entice users to click a link or read an article.
Data mining
The goal of data mining is to firstly extract information, patterns, connections and trends from a large data set and secondly to transform the results into a comprehensible structure for further use.
Doxing
The term doxing refers to a form of cyberbullying in which the attackers make use of sensitive or secret information to harass, expose, financially harm or exploit the targeted individual.
Data surveillance
Data surveillance or dataveillance refers to the practice of monitoring individuals’ communication, movements, behaviors, and even thoughts by tracking the digital traces they leave behind in a highly connected, networked society. These traces include credit card transactions, GPS locations, social media likes and comments, emails, messages, and other forms of location and activity data.
Deepfake
A deepfake is a video, image, or audio recording that has been digitally created or edited to make a person’s face or body appear as someone else. While not always made with malicious intent, deepfakes can be used in fake news, hoaxes, or blackmail.
Disinformation-for-hire firms
Disinformation-for-hire firms are organizations or individuals that offer services to deliberately create and spread false or misleading information for the financial, political, or strategic gain of the hiring actors. These services include crafting misleading social media posts, producing fake news, manipulating content to influence public opinion, creating personalized messaging to affect political decisions, and employing bots to sway public opinion.
Disinformation
Disinformation is false or inaccurate information that is deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, organization, or country.
Fake news
Fake news refers to information that is false, misleading or a hoax. In contrast to “disinformation”, fake news are not necessarily spread with the intent to harm although the term is widely used as such.
Fake media outlets
Fake media outlets (also: fake news outlets, fake news websites) are outlets that spread false information for other purposes than satire. These websites frequently resemble genuine news websites but have the intention to manipulate (political) discourse, to sow mistrust in legacy media and to harm certain groups or people.
Echo chamber
An echo chamber is a group, online or offline, where people mostly communicate with others who share the same opinions. This limits their exposure to different viewpoints. Political forums, for example, can act as echo chambers.
Greenwashing
Greenwashing describes false claims made by companies about environmental action to deceive the public and gain a greener image.
GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation enacted by the European Union on May 25, 2018, aimed at protecting the personal data and privacy of individuals within the EU and EEA. It establishes guidelines for how organizations must collect, store, process, and protect personal data, granting individuals greater control over their data.
Hate-speech
The term refers to publicly expressing hate or encouraging violence towards a person or group based on ethnicity, religion, sex or sexual orientation.
Influence campaigns
Influence campaigns are operations conducted by private or public actors (e.g., individuals, state actors, etc.) with the intent to shape and influence the opinions of target audiences in organized and coordinated ways.
Lateral thinking
Lateral thinking refers to solving problems through creative and unconventional approaches that challenge traditional assumptions or ideologies. In politics or policymaking, it can involve reframing debates or reimagining strategies to reach innovative solutions.
Misinformation
Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is spread without the intent to harm, manipulate, or mislead a person, organization, country, or social group.
Malinformation
Malinformation is factual information that is taken out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.
Microtargeting
Microtargeting is an advertising strategy that utilizes data analytics to study the digital footprints left behind by individuals to target specific people or small groups based on personal information such as demographics, behaviors, and interests. This technique is often used in the political realm and advertising, as it enables more personalized messaging aimed at influencing or persuading the target audience, which has been scientifically proven to be more effective.
OSINT
OSINT (Open Source Intelligence), in relation to disinformation, involves the use of publicly available data to track, analyze, and identify misleading or false information spread through open sources like social media, news outlets, and online forums.
Polarization
Polarization is the division of people or opinions into two opposing and often extreme sides. For example, political ideologies can become polarized, reducing space for compromise or shared understanding.
Strategic narratives
Strategic narratives are coherent and purposeful storylines used in influence operations to frame and construct reality, align perceptions, and legitimize actions or policies in an attempt to shape the cognitive environment of target audiences in line with various incentives.
Troll
A troll is a person, usually online, who posts deliberately offensive, provocative, or disruptive comments with the intent of upsetting or enraging others.
Troll Factory or Troll Farm
A troll factory (or troll farm) consists of bots or organized groups of individuals who produce large volumes of online content aimed at spreading disinformation, amplifying political narratives, or provoking emotional reactions. These operations are often well-funded and capable of generating hundreds or thousands of posts daily.
Uncanny valley
The uncanny valley is a psychological phenomenon describing people’s negative or uncomfortable reactions to lifelike robots or AI-generated images that closely resemble humans. The term was introduced by robotics professor Masahiro Mori in 1970, based on his observation that as robots appear more humanlike, they become more appealing—up to a point. Beyond that point, the resemblance can cause unease or even fear (Caballar, 2019).
VPN
A VPN is a virtual private network that creates a secure connection between two points in an open network.
Zombie NGO
A zombie NGO is an organization that remains operational despite lacking meaningful activity, support, or funding. Such organizations may continue to exist due to political patronage or to serve specific agendas, such as political legitimization, attracting donor funds, or acting as a front for other interests.
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