Mizaru

Project Mizaru was born out of the realization that among the many angles of climate change research, there is a sufficient lack to date of research on the actual acceptance of disinformation on the climate crisis. The project aims is to create the definitive compendium of scholarly explanations of why climate disinformation is still accepted by large numbers of people, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.

Faculty PI: Michael Mosser

Task Team Leader: Jacquie Moss

Mizaru is a “meta-study” that aims to create the definitive compendium of scholarly explanations of why climate disinformation is accepted by large numbers of people, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. The team is examining scholarship from a diverse range of disciplines, including psychology, where a confirmation bias approach might explain disinformation acceptance; sociology, where scholars examine social pressures or group identity dynamics as driving reasons for disinformation acceptance; and political science, where questions related to partisanship and ideological framing are examined. These explanations and the meta-level summary of those explanations will then be applied to climate change mis- and disinformation specifically.

Decoding Individuals’ Predispositions toward Climate Change Mis- and Disinformation
Published February 5, 2024