Towards Designing Social Interventions For Online Climate Change Denialism Discussions

TL;DR

This study develops a framework using insider language and AI to deliver evidence-based interventions in online climate change denial communities, fostering positive engagement and open discussions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel AI-driven approach for automatically delivering evidence-based social interventions in conspiracy theory communities on Reddit.

Findings

Evidence-based interventions with neutral language increase positive engagement.

Climate supporters actively participate and provide additional evidence.

Interventions can be effectively delivered via transparent bot accounts.

Abstract

As conspiracy theories gain traction, it has become crucial to research effective intervention strategies that can foster evidence and science-based discussions in conspiracy theory communities online. This study presents a novel framework using insider language to contest conspiracy theory ideology in climate change denialism on Reddit. Focusing on discussions in two Reddit communities, our research investigates reactions to pro-social and evidence-based intervention messages for two cohorts of users: climate change deniers and climate change supporters. Specifically, we combine manual and generative AI-based methods to craft intervention messages and deploy the interventions as replies on Reddit posts and comments through transparently labeled bot accounts. On the one hand, we find that evidence-based interventions with neutral language foster positive engagement, encouraging open discussions among believers of climate change denialism. On the other, climate change supporters respond positively, actively participating and presenting additional evidence. Our study contributes valuable insights into the process and challenges of automatically delivering interventions in conspiracy theory communities on social media, and helps inform future research on social media interventions.