Overview
- The team from the Universities of Gothenburg and Amsterdam examined communications from eight key climate-disinformation actors in Sweden.
- Posts cultivate a veneer of objectivity by using graphs, diagrams, technical reasoning and rhetoric that signals neutrality.
- Climate activists are depicted as irrational through images of anger and memes, including parodies targeting Greta Thunberg.
- Visual frames cast environmentalism as authoritarian by referencing figures like Mao Zedong and Joseph Goebbels or by replacing a swastika with a recycling symbol.
- The peer-reviewed findings appear in Environmental Politics, underscoring that disinformation spreads through the immediate look and feel of images, memes and visual narratives.