1 Computer-assisted detection and classification of 2 misinformation about climate change 1 2 3,4,* 1 3 Travis G. Coan , Constantine Boussalis , John Cook , and Mirjam O. Nanko 1 4 Department of Politics and the Exeter Q-Step Centre, University of Exeter, United Kingdom. 2 5 Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. 3 6 Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub, Monash University, Australia. 4 7 Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University, USA. * 8 Corresponding author email:
[email protected] 9 ABSTRACT A growing body of scholarship investigates the role of misinformation in shaping the debate on climate change. Our research builds on and extends this literature by 1) developing and validating a comprehensive taxonomy of climate misinformation, 2) conducting the largest content analysis to date on contrarian claims, 3) developing a computational model to accurately detect specific claims, and 4) drawing on an extensive corpus from conservative think-tank (CTTs) websites and contrarian blogs to 10 construct a detailed history of misinformation over the past 20 years. Our study finds that climate misinformation produced by CTTs and contrarian blogs has focused on attacking the integrity of climate science and scientists and, increasingly, has challenged climate policy and renewable energy. We further demonstrate the utility of our approach by exploring the influence of corporate and foundation funding on the production and dissemination of specific contrarian claims. 11 Organised climate change contrarianism has played a significant role in the spread of misinformation and the delay of 1 12 meaningful action to mitigate climate change. Research suggests that climate misinformation leads to a number of negative 2 3 4 13 outcomes such as reduced climate literacy, public polarization, canceling out accurate information, reinforcing climate 5 6 14 silence, and influencing how scientists engage with the public.