The Online Climate Policy Crisis: Misinformation and Disinformation in the Digital Age

While climate change must be countered through effective mitigation and adaptation approaches at the global, national, and local levels, implementing effective policies to do so can only be accomplished through buy in by a critical mass of citizens. However, we know that to-date this remains a challenging prospect to accomplish both in the Global North and Global South. While countries in both regions face many different challenges in doing so,
there are also a number of shared roadblocks to attaining popular support for effective environmental governance. Beyond the types of challenges themselves, various states both experience their impacts asymmetrically, while simultaneously being equipped with different tools for treating them. As democracy is not a binary category of government but instead a multi-dimensional spectrum along which states are constantly struggling, it becomes pivotal
to seek to develop policies that deal with modern challenges while taking advantage of new technologies and techniques. This project aims to analyze the type of digital tools that exist which channel the types of information and misinformation that contributes to informing increasing numbers of people. How these information flows are managed and leveraged is pivotal for effectively governing in general, and specifically for environmental and climate
governance.

Faculty Supervisor:

Ryan Katz-Rosene

Student:

Partner:

Centre for International Governance Innovation

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education; Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Ottawa

Program: