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by Alison Gilchrist, CSTPR Science Writing Intern<\/em><\/p>\n A lie is more convincing if it\u2019s backed up by multiple sources. For the many organizations deliberately sowing mistrust of climate science, this was clearly a lesson taken to heart. Justin Farrell<\/a>, a visiting professor from Yale currently stationed at the CIRES Center for Science and Technology Policy Research (CSTPR), has been studying how the seemingly unconnected organizations distributing misinformation about climate change are actually part of a broader network, a network that has managed its information flow to be as convincing as possible.<\/p>\n In 2012, Farrell had a hunch – he thought that organizations spreading misinformation about climate change were probably working together to create a cohesive message. He decided to try using social network analysis to confirm this theory.<\/p>\n \u201cI tried to look at it as objectively as I could,\u201d said Farrell. \u201cI said: \u2018Let\u2019s trace the connections between organizations who are involved in spreading misinformation about climate change.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Farrell focused on Exxon and the Koch family foundations, prominent corporations involved in spreading of misinformation. He was especially interested in identifying the organizations that received money from Exxon or the Koch foundations, which justified their connection in his recreated network. He also looked at who was sitting on the boards of every organization in the network to try and find the individuals who linked two or more organizations.<\/p>\n \u201cI was really trying to get a handle on the cohesiveness of this movement,\u201d said Farrell. \u201cInstead of blaming one organization, let\u2019s understand how it\u2019s structured. Let\u2019s understand who\u2019s more powerful, who has the most connections.\u201d<\/p>\n This \u201cbird\u2019s eye view\u201d of the network is a valuable tool in understanding the movement to deny climate change.<\/p>\n \u201cMoney really has power within this movement, but not in the sense of providing resources, like advertising and things, it more signifies the cohesiveness of the movement,\u201d said Farrell. \u201cYou start seeing an inner core of organizations\u2014they\u2019re funded by the same sources, sit on the same boards, that sort of thing. This means they are able to organize each other more effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n How do these connections, and specifically the receipt of money, change the messages that an organization disseminates? Farrell collected all publicly available writings from the organizations in his network, a collection that includes web pages, pamphlets, and other written material, between 1993 and 2013. He used machine-learning methods\u2014essentially helping the computer to identify patterns hidden to us\u2014to characterize themes in the writing disseminated by these groups. These themes included temperature trends, human health\u2014even Al Gore.<\/p>\n \u201cOver time, organizations who received money differed from organizations who didn\u2019t,\u201d said Farrell. Organizations receiving money tended to write about the same themes at the same time, suggesting that they were being directed to focus on particular things.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, March 15 Farrell will discuss his research on this topic<\/a>, including the machine learning methods he developed to analyze the massive amount of textual data (see Nature Climate Change<\/a> and PNAS<\/a>). The talk is at CSTPR from noon- 1:00 pm, and is free and open to the public. CSTPR is located at 1333 Grandview Avenue, Boulder. Directions to CSTPR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Alison Gilchrist, CSTPR Science Writing Intern A lie is more convincing if it\u2019s backed up by multiple sources. For the many organizations deliberately sowing mistrust of climate science, this was clearly a lesson taken to heart. Justin Farrell, a … Continue reading