ISD’s climate monitoring “War Room” keeps watch over misinfo activity during COP26

Our climate monitoring ‘War Room’ unit is profiled in this article by Cities Today, highlighting our efforts over COP26 to assess real-time mis- and disinformation activity that could have adverse effects on the Summit and related public opinion. Throughout the Summit, ISD is keeping watch over bespoke Climate Dashboards with the help of eight partner organisations across the climate sector, and releasing daily findings and trends to the general public. Built with CASM Technology, these Dashboards assess the prevalence of anti-climate narratives online and on traditional media outlets worldwide throughout the duration of COP26.

Our CEO, Sasha Havlicek, is quoted saying: “ISD has seen climate emerge as a new vector for actors pushing a culture war agenda. Our research continues to show how they connect disinformation, extremist and conspiracy ecosystems with a broader public, laundering unfounded or unscientific ideas into the mainstream. This is a pattern we have documented for other key policy challenges such as migration, electoral integrity and COVID-19, and one which could threaten climate action if left unchecked.”

One of our partners, Stop Funding Heat, released a report created with support from ISD and our technology with CASM, analysing climate misinformation advertising and the inefficient misinformation labelling system on Facebook. The BBC, Mashable India, and Homeland Security Today, drew on the findings from this report and some of our own recent work exposing climate change denial on Facebook in separate articles days after the beginning of the Summit.

Further coverage on our “War room” is seen in the Guardian, and NPR.