New article: “Steering Great Barrier Reef climate science narratives through the mediasphere in a time of misinformation”

My research paper, titled “Steering Great Barrier Reef climate science narratives through the mediasphere in a time of misinformation” has just been published in npj Climate Action. The paper explores how the media reported on a 2022 report from the Australian Institute of Marine Science about coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef. We found that the media reporting was often misleading, which was reflected by a spike in climate science denial expressed on social media.

The threat of climate change to the health of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is undisputed. However, news reporting about the GBR in recent years has often failed to accurately convey the risks to the reef of a heating climate, sometimes leading to discourses of climate change denial across the hybrid media landscape. This paper presents one such case where an Australian government research agency reporting about the state of coral cover on the GBR inadvertently fed into problematic reporting, and a spike in online climate science denial in the days following its release. The study traces media coverage and social media commentary following the report’s release, demonstrating how science communication became political and played into climate science denial online. We provide recommendations for the diverse communicators charged with the challenging task of translating, reporting and disseminating science information to help avoid unwittingly bolstering climate denial narratives.

You can read more about this research in the freely-available article.