Emma Frances Bloomfield and Denise Tillery have created a thorough investigation on the effects that social media has on society's opinions on climate change. Throughout their article, they investigate two Facebook groups. These two groups focus on spreading their own opinion on climate change, whether their opinions are factual or not. The two groups being studied are Watts Up With That (WUWT), which is an American group, and Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF), which is a group from the United Kingdom. The authors had selected these two groups because both of these groups are prominent in circulating climate change denial using social media. "These Facebook pages represent just two of the many social media communities that promote environmental skepticism" (p. 24). There are many people who turn to social media to gain access to daily news. However, not many of these people ever think to check the credibility of the sources they are getting information from. This is what leads to the spread of false information.
Both WUWT and GWPF use hyperlinks on their pages. However, these hyperlinks are not used to cite actual sources. These hyperlinks connect their Facebook post to their corresponding blog post. The blog post will just display the same information as the original Facebook post. "The groups create a mostly insular community with the same information recirculating and taking on the appearance of truth through its repetition and the presence of hyperlinks" (p. 26). The more someone sees a certain piece of information circulating, the more likely they are to believe this information.
Both of these groups focus mainly on spreading false information on climate change. Many people have already fallen into their traps as Watts Up With that has over 11,846 likes and 11,323 followers and the Global Warming Policy Forum has over 7,425 likes and 7,609 followers. The difference between liking a page and following a page is simply that if you like it, you agree with it, but if you follow it, the updates from the page will show up on your news feed. This means that new posts will gain more traction the more followers a page has. WUWT is known to use violence as a solution when someone does not agree with the group posts, while GWPF casts doubt on those who do not agree.
In conclusion, the study of these two Facebook groups conducted by Tillery and Bloomfield will hopefully open our society's eyes to the importance of checking credibility when it comes to social media posts about topics that are controversial.
Hello Nicole,
ReplyDeleteWell written and easily understood blog. It's also very sad, because this spread of false information can definitely set us back in how we combat global warming, considering we have so little time to fix our mistakes. It's also upsetting how these Facebook groups create animosity and rivalry instead of strengthening community and spreading the right information on what truly matter.