Both climate and gender disinformation are rampant. How are they connected?

When Catherine McKenna was appointed Canada’s minister of environment and climate change from 2015 to 2019, she was excited. It was the year that the world adopted the Paris Agreement – one of the most significant pieces of climate legislation to date – and McKenna led the negotiations on behalf of Canada. While in office, she rolled out a number of progressive climate plans and reforms, including a carbon pricing scheme, efforts to phase out coal and reduce plastics in waterways, divest from pipelines, and a plan to double Canada’s protected areas in collaboration with First Nations. 

Almost immediately an online disinformation campaign against her was launched. Critics dubbed her “climate barbie”, her social media channels filled up with negative and gendered comments from climate change deniers. Attacks against her escalated to the point where her constituency office was vandalized and a personal security detail was assigned to her. Meaningful dialogue around climate policy was made all but impossible. She declined to seek a second term and left politics. “I’ve left public life not because of the haters, but because I just want to focus on climate change,” she said. 

McKenna’s example is not an isolated case. Annalena Baerbock, the Green Party’s candidate for chancellor in Germany in 2020 was the target of Russian state-backed media disinformation and much more extensive negative coverage than her male peers.  A fake quote that Baerbock wanted to ban cats and dogs as pets to help combat climate change, and a fake nude photo with a quote suggesting she had engaged in sex work went viral, overflowing her inboxes with hate and threats of violence online. Jacinda Ardern was New Zealand’s most recent female president who pushed for some of the country’s strictest regulations on climate change (as well as other accomplishments, like banning assault rifles and forming the most diverse government in New Zealand’s history with more women, people of color, LGBTQ and Indigenous members of Parliament than ever before). She fought sexism from outside and within her cabinet, eventually stepping down before her term was up. 

While seemingly an outcome of rampant sexism and misogyny in media, these two examples hint at another disturbing reality: The way that sexism and anti-gender rhetoric is leveraged as a way to detract from important and urgent climate action. 

Studies have shown that gender diversity in parliaments leads to more stringent climate policies; conversely, studies have also shown a correlation between sexism and climate denialism. In other words, the more sexism in a space, the poorer climate outcomes will likely be. Women have been demonstrated to be more effective leaders both in normal times and during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic; experts believe this extends to the climate crisis as well. Both climate change and feminism advocate for collective action and radical transformations, but disinformation campaigns undermine such efforts by sowing discord within communities and using anti-feminist sentiments to create divisions, weakening broader social movements and solidarity between groups. 

Climate disinformation – famously funded by Big Oil since the 1980’s, has now morphed into a new generation of denialism. Whereas energy companies are more set on greenwashing their practices to delay climate action,  conservative and right-leaning organizations are touting the benefits of climate change, downplaying the impacts, and sowing mistrust in climate activists, policies, and solutions. A recent report by the Center for Countering digital hate foundation found that in just the last 5 years, youtube influencers have shifted from old climate denial tactics (“Global warming is not happening/ Climate change is not caused by human activities”) to a new form of climate denialism (“The impacts of global warming are beneficial or harmless/ Climate solutions won’t work/ Climate science and the climate movement are unreliable.”) All of these have real world implications, from delaying climate action to criminalizing climate protests and activists. 

At the same time, anti-gender rhetoric has also been on the rise. State-aligned actors from the Philippines to Poland have spread false, humiliating, and damaging narratives against female politicians aimed at shielding the ruling power, according to a recent study from Demos. In Western Europe, right-wing political actors have used gendered disinformation narratives against progressive female legislators, deeming them unfit for power. Between 2011 and 2021, annual spending on the anti-gender movement increased by around 400%, with Russia, Europe, and the US as the top funders. Analysis by the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) found last year that misinformation and disinformation targeting the LGBTQ+ community is one of the “most present and consistent in the European Union.” 

While sexist attitudes are key to understanding extremist and political violence, just putting it down to social norms and traditional views doesn’t alone explain the rise in coordinated disinformation attacks. Instead, the playbook tactic of singling out certain groups (LGBTQ, migrants, women etc) as the “other” functions largely to sow discord between groups, and detracts from often more pressing issues. The ultimate goal of gendered disinformation is to discourage the exercise of freedom of expression and to undermine democracy by building mistrust in public media and democratic institutions. For the sake of democracy, fighting gender disinformation is necessary. And if we know that the participation of women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community is crucial for creating just, strict, and effective climate policy, then it it is imperative that we see fighting gender disinformation as an urgent and crucial form of climate action.

Photo courtesy of Alisdare Hickson/Flickr creative commons