Climate (Mis)Information

Design a mindful binge-watching experience on Youtube

A recent report published by Avaaz highlights the impact of Youtube in the spread of disinformation and misinformation about climate change.

One of the most relevant findings from the report is that “YouTube is driving millions of people to watch climate misinformation videos every day. These videos aren’t just being uploaded to YouTube and organically seen by interested audiences. Instead, YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is giving these videos free promotion and showing misinformation to millions who wouldn’t have been exposed to it otherwise.”

The design challenge of this project will be:

How can we empower people to overcome the pitfalls of Youtube recommendation algorithm and have a more mindful binge-watching experience about climate information?

The first goal of this project will be to investigate how people personally experience the influence of Youtube’s recommendation algorithm in their information feed. When do people encounter climate misinformation? And making people more aware of how this influence works. How can we expose the hidden dynamics of the algorithm?

The second goal would be to make these experiences visible and show them back to the public. For example, we can tell users: this is what your two hours of binge-watching look like. You started from a climate fiction trailer and you ended up in the conspiracy zone. How do you feel about it? What would you like to see instead?