AoIR 2020

#ArsonEmergency: Climate Change Disinformation during the Australian Bushfire Season 2019-2020

Tobias R. Keller, Tim Graham, Dan Angus, and Axel Bruns

• 27-31 Oct. 2020 – Association of Internet Researchers 2020 conference, online

The 2019-2020 Australian bushfire season was devastating: an estimated 18 million hectares burned, millions of animals died, and public health was threatened when the national capital Canberra measured the worst air quality index of any major city worldwide. During this bushfire season, scientists pointed to the link between the bushfires and climate change: increasing temperatures in Australia mean that bushfires will become ever more extreme and difficult to contain.

Yet with social media platforms including Twitter becoming the major news source for Australians, citizens did not only encounter evidence-based information regarding the major issues in the 2019-2020 bushfire season online. These platforms have also become a fertile habitat for bots and trolls that spread propaganda, conspiracy theories, and disinformation. Initial research into the public debate around the 2019-2020 bushfire season identified the hashtag #ArsonEmergency as a particular focus of such activity. The hashtag was used especially to spread the – false – claim that the majority of the bushfires had been caused by arson, and were therefore due to human activity rather than an increasingly extreme climate.

This paper was part of a panel on “‘Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour’ and Other Online Influence Operations in Social Media Spaces”. The full panel video is below, and starts with our paper.

Video of the Panel

Extended Abstract

Keller, Tobias, Tim Graham, Dan Angus, Axel Bruns, Rolf Nijmeijer, Kristoffer Laigaard Nielbo, Anja Bechmann, Lisa-Maria Neudert, Nahema Marchal, Samantha Bradshaw, Patrícia Rossini, Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Erica Anita Baptista, and Vanessa Veiga de Oliveira. “‘Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour’ and Other Online Influence Operations in Social Media Spaces.” Selected Papers of Internet Research (Oct. 2020). DOI: 10.5210/spir.v2020i0.11132.