8 Of Top 10 Podcasts Spreading Disinformation And Outright Climate Lies - "Perceived Authenticity", Y'know!

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Remember last November, when Elon Musk joined Joe Rogan on his podcast, and the two dismissed meat production as “irrelevant” to the climate crisis? Or last December, when fellow podcaster Russell Brand, once a committed vegan for ethical and environmental reasons, posted about eating steak at Mar-a-Lago with President-elect Trump? New research from Yale finds that the leading podcasters are increasingly serving up misinformation about climate change and the impact of eating meat, with a side of charisma.

“Of the 10 most popular online shows, eight have spread false or misleading information about climate change,” the Yale Climate Connections analysis found. It also revealed that rather than outright denying climate change, today’s most influential media personalities now push subtler, more insidious narratives — arguing that climate solutions don’t work, that global warming is beneficial or that environmental policies are just tools for government overreach. According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, these “new denial” messages made up 70 percent of climate misinformation on YouTube in 2023, up from 35 percent in 2018.

Misinformation has consequences for climate action, especially around the role dietary change can play to bring down emissions. Eating less meat is one of the most powerful forms of individual climate action, according to Project Drawdown. Yet polling has shown that 74 percent of Americans believe eating less meat would have little or no effect on emissions, when the opposite is true. The popularity of podcasts is growing, as audiences look to the medium and their influential hosts for important information, including news. According to Pew Research, nearly half of all Americans surveyed (49 percent) tuned into a podcast in 2022. And among those listeners, more than one in three (36 percent) stated they made a lifestyle change, like adjusting their diet, based on something they heard; 28 percent said they bought something promoted or discussed on a podcast.

Elisa Tattersall Wallin, a researcher at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Borås, who has studied podcasts and climate information, tells Sentient that the draw of podcasts may be due in part to a perceived authenticity. “Studies show that podcast hosts often talk in a very informal and personable style,” she says, “and so they’re perceived as authentic, and you believe someone who’s authentic.” This can be in stark contrast to professional journalists on television or radio news, “who might speak in a more formal tone.”

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https://sentientmedia.org/joe-rogan-other-podcasts-spread-climate-disinfo/

[cachukis]

1. It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair