Analysis of climate conspiracy narratives on European Telegram channels
An investigation into almost 4,000 conspiracy theory-prone Telegram channels and groups in over 20 European languages has revealed a worrying spread of false narratives relating to the European Union’s climate and environmental policies.
On February 9, 2024, Dutch MEP Rob Roos told an audience in Poland that the EU Green Deal is “destroying our food system,” calling the situation a “new kind of communism.” Roos, a far-right politician and independent member of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group together with far-right parties such as Fratelli d’Italia and Spain’s Vox, provided no evidence to support he.
Although the event in Warsaw was of a smaller scale and the video on YouTube collected only 1,900 views, an extract of Roos’ statements was shared on a large scale by conspiracy influencers on social media, focusing on the focus on the EU’s climate policies.
On Telegram, a channel called DiscloseTV posted Roos’ clip with a quote calling climate change a “manufactured crisis.” The video was quickly shared by other channels, reaching over a quarter of a million views.
This is just one of many examples of how climate conspiracy narratives are spreading on social media ahead of the EU parliamentary elections in June. Many of the groups behind these narratives have previously spread conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 and are now turning to climate issues as far-rightparties increasingly focus on environmental policy.
The main forms of climate disinformation
Viral narratives claim that environmental regulations make hunger “inevitable” or that, under the cover of pandemic prevention, the EU is seeking new powers to limit flights and civil rights in the “name” of fighting change climate.
A Telegram post saying this was seen by 250,000 people before spreading to other platforms. “Conspiracy and far-right groups who have exploited COVID denialism and anti-vaccination misinformation for relevance during the pandemic have quickly moved on to other issues to try to maintain their relevance,” says Callum Hood, head of research at the Center For Countering Digital Hate.
The impact of climate disinformation on EU elections
Experts believe that misinformation about climate change is entering the mainstream debate in several European countries and will play a key role in upcoming elections. Sean Buchan, weather disinformation researcher at Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), says that conspiracy influencers are “chasing the hype” and are moving to post about climate and farmer protests as COVID-19 becomes less interesting to their audience.
“With increased activity on climate policies, there is an opportunity to exploit people’s legitimate fears and concerns and profit from them,” says Buchan. “It will definitely influence the outcome of the EU elections , because it has influenced elections in the past. We have already seen in Germany how attacks exaggerating the problems associated with the introduction of heat pumps by the Greens have influenced the popularity of their party”.
The increase in climate misinformation in recent months
Since late November 2023, Euronews Green has been monitoring climate discourse on Telegram, which has become a hub for conspiracy groups during the COVID pandemic. We tracked 3,899 conspiracy-minded channels and groups in over 20 European languages. Overall, posts from these chats have been viewed at least 100 million times each month.
The discussion relating to the climate has evolved substantially in the period monitored. It was not a prominent part of the conversation in the fall of 2023, with disinformation influencers primarily focused on the conflict in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as continuing to post about the pandemic.
However, in the months since, climate change narratives have increased significantly compared to COVID. They increased during and after COP28, which took place between November 30 and December 15, from an average of 250 posts to a peak of 1,000 posts per day.
During this time, climate discourseincreased 400% at its peak and has since remained higher than before. In the five months since late November, the data also shows that daily climate talk on conspiracy-minded channels has doubled and remains prominent as of this writing.
The channels and groups monitored also took advantage of the farmers’ protests that broke out in January. There have been spikes in activity that have eclipsed COVID-related content, as channel owners have sought to exploit the protests and reduce farmers’ multi-faceted complaints to attacks on EU weather policies.
These posts peaked four times higher than COVID-related posts. This led to January being the month with the highest number of total post views across monitored channels and groups, reaching 250 million views compared to 131 million views in March. Post peaks on farmers’ protests also correlated with spikes in posts mentioning the EU and the World Economic Forum, both popular targets of conspiracy theorists.
Far from being limited to conspiracy groups, climate denial and misinformation are increasingly reaching mainstream debate, according to Leonie Pflaller, an analyst for the US company NewsGuard which rates news sites.
One example is persistent claims that extreme cold events belie climate change. “Thehashtags climatescam or KlimaSchwindel (in German) remain popular on X,” says Pfaller.
Telegram’s role in the climate conversation
Although platforms like Twitter/X and Facebook receive more media coverage for hosting false and misleading information, Telegram has become a key node in the distribution of conspiracy views.
In many European countries, COVID-skeptics have flocked to the largely unmoderated platform during the pandemic and asked the public to follow them, sometimes after being banned from other platforms for violating their policies. companies.
In our analysis, German-language content ranked significantly higher compared to other languages. More than 33% of climate posts in our dataset were in German, compared to nearly 36% in English, 8% in Spanish, and 7.5% in French.
According to the company’s own estimates, Telegram has exceeded 900 million users worldwide, becoming one of the largest social networks in the world. However, the company has managed to avoid closer scrutiny in Europe.
Reporting 41 million average monthly users in the EU in February, just below the threshold for major platforms set by the EU, Telegram has circumvented the Commission’s direct supervision and the more stringent obligations set out in the moderation of block contents.
The chilling effect of weather disinformation in the post-election period
Meanwhile, experts say climate change misinformation is no longer shared only by hardened skeptics, but has been “co-opted” into the culture wars and mixed with “a variety” of anti-establishment grievances, from migration to reproductive rights .
“Climate change denialism is often mixed with far-reaching conspiracy theories, claiming that the media, experts and governments are collaborating on this,” says Pfaller.
Joe Düker, a researcher at the Center for Monitoring, Analysis, and Strategy – a Germany-based nonprofit that tracks conspiracy ideologies, disinformation, anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism, particularly on Telegram – said that conspiracy ideologies feed on a conspiracy vision of the world. This means that those who believe in COVID conspiracies would be open to false or misleading climate narratives, and vice versa.
“Because conspiracy and far-right ideological influencers want to address a broad audience and want to touch emotions such as fear or anger, they tend to focus on topics that are currently widely – and hotly – debated in society,” says Düker . This includes the climate.
The way weather issues are discussed by conspiracy influencers has also evolved over time, according to Düker. “Whereas climate deniers once denied that climate change was happening at all or that it was not caused by human-generated greenhouse gases, now many climate deniers paint climate science as unreliable or argue that proposed solutions to climate change don’t work,” he says.
Düker adds that climate change can be expected to remain a “relevant topic” for conspiracy influencers as its impact on the world intensifies.
The impact of climate disinformation will extend beyond EU elections, says CAAD’s Sean Buchan.
“After the election, don’t underestimate the chilling effect on climate policy,” Buchan predicted. “Elected officials will feel they don’t have the political capital to implement climate action, and the necessary transition will be slower, negatively impacting millions of lives.”
