Solar geoengineering and the chemtrails conspiracy on social media
Solar geoengineering and the chemtrails conspiracy on social media
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太阳能地球工程和社交媒体上的化学凝结尾阴谋
作者：
D. Tingley;Gernot Wagner
在过去的十年里，关于太阳能地球工程的社交媒体讨论迅速增加，这与科学界越来越多的关注和普通公众的低但不断增加的意识是一致的。这个话题在网上也引起了越来越多的关注。但与科学讨论不同的是，网上的大多数讨论都集中在所谓的“化学痕迹阴谋论”（chemtrails conspiracy theory）上，这是一种被广泛驳斥的观点，即飞机在飞机尾迹中喷洒有毒的化学混合物，目的从控制天气到控制精神。本文介绍了2016年36000个主题的合作国会选举研究（CCES）中具有全国代表性的1000个主题的民意调查的结果，并分析了社交媒体提及地球工程的范围。前一项调查显示，约10%的美国人认为化学制剂阴谋是“完全”的，另有约20% - 30%的人认为“有些”是真的，党派关系或党派关系的强弱没有明显差异。在过去的十年里，阴谋论的观点占了社交媒体上地球工程话题的60%左右。其中，Twitter占了90%，而地球工程的总提及率为75%。进一步的亲和力分析揭示了一个广泛的阴谋网络社区。社交媒体的匿名性似乎有助于它的传播，同样也有助于传播未经证实或完全虚假的信息。网络行为对现实世界产生了重要的影响，对气候科学传播和政策产生了影响。
Discourse on social media of solar geoengineering has been rapidly increasing over the past decade, in line with increased attention by the scientific community and low but increasing awareness among the general public. The topic has also found increased attention online. But unlike scientific discourse, a majority of online discussion focuses on the so-called chemtrails conspiracy theory, the widely debunked idea that airplanes are spraying a toxic mix of chemicals through contrails, with supposed goals ranging from weather to mind control. This paper presents the results of a nationally representative 1000-subject poll part of the 36,000-subject 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), and an analysis of the universe of social media mentions of geoengineering. The former shows ~ 10% of Americans declaring the chemtrails conspiracy as “completely” and a further ~ 20–30% as “somewhat” true, with no apparent difference by party affiliation or strength of partisanship. Conspiratorial views have accounted for ~ 60% of geoengineering discourse on social media over the past decade. Of that, Twitter has accounted for >90%, compared to ~ 75% of total geoengineering mentions. Further affinity analysis reveals a broad online community of conspiracy. Anonymity of social media appears to help its spread, so does the general ease of spreading unverified or outright false information. Online behavior has important real-world reverberations, with implications for climate science communication and policy.