2023-08-15 15:00:07
Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino, the new director of Twitter, April 18, 2023, in Miami Beach, United States. REBECCA BLACKWELL/AP
A study posted Tuesday 15 August in the peer-reviewed journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution shows that environmental and climate activists were particularly numerous to leave Twitter – renamed X – after the takeover of the social network by Elon Musk. The team from the University of Pomona, California, compared two sets of users with an interest in politics: the first, made up of 458,000 Internet users who posted messages about the 2020 US presidential election, served as a group of witnesses ; the second, which includes 380,000 accounts that have published several messages on climate change or biodiversity, was created in October 2022, when Twitter was taken over.
The research team then measured the posts of these accounts at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, to check which ones were still active (using as a criterion the fact of posting at least one message in a two-week period). . “The proportion of active accounts has decreased for the “environment” group as well as for the “politics” group”note the researchers, “but a significantly larger proportion of users in the ‘environment’ group have gone out of business”. In April, only 52.5% of accounts in the “environment” group continued to post on the social network, compared to 79.4% of users in the “politics” group. Both sets contained mostly US users.
Evolution of the number of active “environment” and “political” accounts over time. TRENDS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
These findings “confirm disturbing early reports of the increasing amount of disinformation and misinformation regarding climate change on Twitter”, say the authors. Several recent studies showed that the new moderation rules put in place by the social network greatly facilitate the dissemination of intoxespecially climatic.
New studies complicated to conduct
Elon Musk notably fired a large part of the social network’s moderation teams after his takeover and restored the accounts of a large number of far-right and conspiracy activists. If the multi-billionaire himself does not deny the reality of climate change, he has, on several occasions, broadcast questionable or false messages on its causes and consequences, in particular on the role of agriculture in greenhouse gas emissions.
Read also the synthesis: Conspirators, homophobes, neo-Nazis… Ten emblematic accounts of the drift of Twitter under Elon Musk
Under Elon Musk, Twitter also went after some environmental organizations. The social network has recently accused the European Climate Foundation for having helped the NGO Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which fights against online hate, to analyze data from the social network for a study showing the responsibility of the platform in the dissemination of hateful messages. The social network has filed a complaint against the CCDH, which it accuses of damaging its reputation.
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