Conspiracists, anticonspiracists, and everything in between: climate change conspiracy practices in the Italian Facebooksphere

The conspiracist attitude has been widely associated with misinformation processes. Conspiracy beliefs tend to make users more vulnerable to the assimilation of disinformation, but they can also provide the symbolic resources where groups of users find belonging, identity, and meaning (Bergmann 2018). When it comes to environmental issues, however, conspiracism holds a more complex position. The anti-establishment stance that characterizes conspiracy narratives is also, in certain respects, one of the elements found in environmental movements that follow a revolutionary rather than a reformist logic (Wepfer 2021). Further complicating the picture is the fact that the specific issue of climate change is difficult to encase in a polarized contrast between publics and counter-publics, which for other issues turns out to be an efficient analysis tool (Gemini et al. 2021); in fact, different national contexts show crucial variations in the way different beliefs and propensities toward climate change do or do not translate into environmentalist action (Tuitjer et al. 2022). For these reasons, the study of climate change-related online conspiracies necessitates a close reading of the discourses and practices that employ conspiracy narratives. Our research therefore asks: 1) What are the main climate change-related conspiracy myths (Schwaiger et al. 2022) circulating on the Italian Facebooksphere? 2) In which groups and pages do these conspiracy myths circulate? 3) How do groups and pages related to debunkers frame those users who believe in these conspiracy myths? The study utilized a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative data analysis with qualitative netnographic observation. The mapping phase of the research used articles published over a 12-months period (October 2021- October 2022) by the five Italian main fact-checkers (Bufale.net, Open, Facta, Pagella Politica and BUTAC) as a starting point. From these articles, queries related to each article were run through the Crowdtangle platform in order to obtain those pages and public groups where the fake news or their debunking were posted. This data was then analyzed to understand the distribution and reach of false information, the presence of conspiracy narratives, individuals, experts or organizations that are making the false claims, and the page/group framing of that false information (support, countering, dobt, non-codifiable etc.). From this phase some of the debunked fake news emerged as particularly useful to understand the current Italian conspiracy myths related to climate change. Some of these news are: NATO airplanes over the Marche region being correlated to the devastating storm occurred on 15 and 16 September 2022; an avalanche on the Marmolada that according to conspiracy theorists was caused by a bomb; the case of an airline pilot being recorded while talking about chemtrails; and the idea that meteorologists create alarmism about global warming. The second step of the research (currently underway) isto use the typologies of groups and pages identified in the mapping phase to conduct a netnographic observation of how conspiracy myths are employed to support groups’ views on climate change. To this aim different typologies of Facebook spaces will be observed: climate change scepticism (i.e. falsi allarmismi sul riscaldamento globale), counter information (i.e. Massimo Mazzucco sostenitori), environmental populism (i.e. Gruppo informazione a 360°), humor and spare time related (i.e. Amo l' INVERNO...Odio l' estate), climate activists (i.e. Teachers for Future Italia) and groups that mocks the conspiracy attitude (i.e. Adotta anche tu un analfabeta funzionale).