PLOS Climate is calling for submissions for a new focus topic on Climate Misinformation and Disinformation.
The unprecedented spread of misinformation and disinformation is threatening democracies worldwide by undermining scientific progress, the integrity of elections, the state of public health, and collective action on the greatest challenge facing our planet: global climate change. Accordingly, we welcome a wide range of submissions that address (a) why people believe misinformation about climate change, (b) the main agents of climate misinformation and disinformation, their main strategies and tactics, and how climate misinformation spreads in society (both offline and online), (c) different types of misinformation regarding climate science, impacts, and/or mitigation and geoengineering measures and how they may differ; (d) what negative consequences climate misinformation has on individuals, communities, and policy-making, as well as (d) effective individual and system-level interventions that can mitigate or reduce the impact of climate misinformation. We welcome submissions from all subject areas and encourage interdisciplinarity. We are particularly interested in novel theoretical frameworks, rigorous experimental data, real-world field studies, computational approaches (including AI), network analysis, and/or systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
There is no deadline for submissions, as we intend to establish this as an ongoing focus topic within the journal. Accepted articles will be published and highlighted on a continuous basis to PLOS Climate’s broad and interdisciplinary readership on an ongoing basis through a variety of channels and forums.