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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Commun.
Sec. Organizational Communication
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1470343
This article is part of the Research Topic Corporations as Disinformation Actors: From Digital Propaganda to Dark PR View all 3 articles

Digital Disinformation Strategies of European Climate Change Obstructionist Think Tanks

Provisionally accepted

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This study explores how European think tanks with obstructive positions on climate policy use the social network X to advance their agendas. The aim is to understand their digital communication strategies, the issues they address, the use of hyperlinks, and the impact on interaction and online polarization. A mixed-methods analysis was conducted on tweets from twelve organizations known for opposing climate policies. Out of an initial 96,607 tweets, 803 relevant messages were selected to evaluate thematic content and interaction reach. The analysis identified five dominant thematic areas in the tweets: economic impacts of climate policy, ideological perspectives, questioning of official science, proposed technological solutions, and other messages. The higher levels of interaction were generated by messages with a political or ideological focus and those proposing technological solutions. In addition, most hyperlinks directed users to the think tanks' own websites rather than to external sources. European anti-climate change think tanks use social network X to promote their agendas through ideological and technical messages that generate high engagement.

    Keywords: Climate Change, climate obstructionism, skepticism, disinformation, Think tanks, digital communication

    Received: 25 Jul 2024; Accepted: 23 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Moreno-Cabanillas, Castillero-Ostio and Serna-Ortega. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Elizabet Castillero-Ostio, University of Malaga, Málaga, 29071, Andalusia, Spain
    Álvaro Serna-Ortega, University of Malaga, Málaga, 29071, Andalusia, Spain

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