Climate Conspiracies in the Western Balkans: Widely Imported and Persistently Repeated
The topic of climate is fertile soil for spreading disinformation. Denying the existence of global warming, conspiracy theories claiming the climate change is a tool in the hands of secret societies or powerful individuals in order to control or harm the populations, allegations that human influence on the climate is not as big as scientists claim it is, are just some of the narratives identified behind the sea of climate disinformation. They can all be found in the Western Balkans media and online platforms in the languages native to the region. Lately, there is also a tendency to deny the benefits of the electric vehicles, renewable sources of energy and other global warming counter-measures, depicting them as dangerous or unreasonable. The roots of this latest topical wave of climate related disinformation is a clear import from abroad.
Climate skepticism, twisted interpretations and manipulations striving to dispute scientifically based reality of climate change has deep roots in the Western Balkans – North Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo – spreading climate disinformation follows the pace and the trends already existing in the European Union.
In all of the Western Balkan countries there are networks of accounts, most of them anonymous or fake, regularly sharing climate disinformation content. The majority of climate disinformation circulating throughout the region represent direct or adjusted copies of the same content shared abroad, and smaller portion is fabricated by local conspiracy theorists. The tendency to cross-reference climate disinformation with ones on other topics is noticed in most of the countries in the region. Such is the case of mixing climate and Covid-19 pandemic disinformation. The origin of the imported climate conspiracy theories circulating throughout the Western Balkans can be traced from all over the world, but they usually begin their existence in the USA, China, Russia or the Western European countries.
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