Dan Kammen raised the importance of social media for communicating aspects of energy and climate. His view of how to effectively do this is in correspondence with Gina McCarthy's ideas. However, social media has the dangers of trolls, fake news, and childish fights. My question to Kammen is how can scientists and good citizens combat the dark side of social media while still being able to effectively bring awareness os issues involving climate, the Earth, and energy? I think this is a crucial discussion to have since the spread of misinformation can decrease the credibility of scientists and have negative consequences socially and environmentally sooner than later. Will collaboration between social media companies and climate scientists be necessary to establish stronger accountability and filter out misinformation?
Watch Dan Kammen's interview here.
The complex network that social media affords us is incredibly useful for our day to day lives, but as Dan Kammen and Oswaldo indicate, it also has a dangerous potential to spread inaccurate information to mass amounts of people. It can be difficult to discern authority on social media platforms and as such I do think that the social media platforms themselves can do a better job at verification. However, I believe the paramount issue at hand in addressing issues of fake news and misinformation is education to empower the individual. Endeavors to educate citizens about the role of data and coming to scientific conclusions, such as this class, allow people to better discern the robustness and fit of a model being applied in a given prediction or conclusion they are reading online. When the individual has a greater ability to discern accuracy for themselves then the importance of platform oversight diminishes; replaced by a pursuit of wider societal education.