AI4TRUST and climate change: from ‘thin ice’ to fake news about the Marmolada tragedy in Italy
“SETE Festival” · 7 and 8 July 2023 · Rovereto (TN, Italy)
This was an absolute first for Trentino: a two-day event to reflect, discuss and debate on the climate and water emergency. With the “SETE Festival” on Friday and Saturday, 7 and 8 July 2023 in Rovereto (TN, Italy), the topics ranged from politics to entrepreneurship, from youth movements to culture, all united by the need to change in order to preserve ourselves. Given the subject matter, it was impossible not to talk about the Marmolada tragedy of 2022, a wound that represents the concrete symbol of climate change violently thrown in everyone’s face, with a painful toll of victims.
The topic of Marmolada was discussed on Friday 7 July at 9 p.m. by the Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK, Italy) researcher Riccardo Gallotti with a talk entitled ‘A mountain of data. A study of the tweets on the Marmolada tragedy between climate denialism and infodemic’, and also the ‘Queen of the Dolomites’ was discussed thanks to the screening of the reportage “Ghiaccio sottile” (Thin Ice), by Gianluca Taraborelli and Aaron Giordani.
Gallotti, in particular, illustrated the results of a study carried out immediately after the Marmolada events in 2022, the result of the work of a Master Thesis by Veronica Orsanico supervised by the above-mentioned researcher. The tweets related to the Marmolada after the disaster were examined: ‘Those denying the link between the tragedy and the climate emergency were really a lot, second only to more neutral tweets such as those related to videos of ice collapses. There is still a lot of work to be done’, Gallotti concluded.
EDMO, the European Digital Media Observatory, reported the identification of numerous false news articles regarding climate change during the month of June in 2022 and 2023. These false narratives were detected by various organisations affiliated with EDMO’s fact-checking network (including, for example, AI4TRUST partners MALDITA and DEMAGOG). The majority of these misleading news pieces can be attributed to specific narratives that aim to influence public opinion. Firstly, there are claims denying the reality of climate change or its connection to human activities. Secondly, there are allegations that traditional media outlets sensationalise climate change without justification. Thirdly, there are assertions that renewable energy, recycling, and electric vehicles are ineffective or even hazardous. Lastly, there are accusations of hypocrisy and foolishness directed towards the climate movement.
This is one of the reasons why climate change will be one of the topics addressed by the European project AI4TRUST, which aims to support media professionals and policymakers in tackling disinformation, of which FBK’s Riccardo Gallotti is project coordinator.
