Most of the climate misinformation spreading in the Western Balkans is copied and adapted from global misinformation narratives, most often reflecting narratives from the United States, China, Russia, or Western European countries. Report by the Metamorphosis Foundation, a North Macedonian fact-checking organization.
This report examines the most common misinformation stories in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, and uses data from local fact-checkers to track how they spread in individual countries and across the region.
diffusion
Here are the three most common false stories found in this area: that chemical trails (white residue left in the sky by airplanes) are used to get people drunk, that the High-Altitude Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is responsible for manipulating weather conditions to cause meteorological phenomena such as floods, fires, droughts or hail, and that climate change does not exist but is merely an excuse for states and political actors to control the population.
A notable exception to the trend of climate misinformation originating abroad and then being adapted domestically is Serbia. According to the report, about half of false claims in Serbia, unlike other countries in the region, were initiated by domestic actors. But even in this case, a significant portion of the misinformation had international roots.
“Exposing the key climate change misinformation narratives in the Western Balkans is critical for the region,” the report’s authors, from the Metamorphosis Foundation, said. “While these countries may seem in many ways completely disconnected from the EU, our analysis shows that many European trends, including the themes and ways in which climate misinformation is spread, have been copied and imported into the region.”
disinformation
that much reportClimate Conspiracies in the Western Balkans: Widely Imported and Repeated was developed by the Metamorphosis Foundation, a fact-checking organization based in North Macedonia, as part of the Climate Facts Europe project. European Fact-Checking Standards Network.
This report is based on fact-checking and rebuttals from 24 fact-checking agencies across Europe. Climate Facts European DatabaseSupplemented by other sources and data.
This report is the third in a planned four-part series to analyse misinformation and disinformation identified in the Climate Facts database as part of the Climate Facts Europe project. The reports will be published once a month until September, in the run-up to the 2024 European Parliament elections.
This author
Brendan Montague is the editor. Ecologist.
Access our fact-checking database Climate facts.efcsn.com. Learn more about EFCSN. Website. Follow EFCSN X, Threadand LinkedIn Get regular updates about your project.
