Unveiling the impact of misinformation and mistrust on environmental issues and democratic progress: a comparative study of the Chinese belt and road initiative (BRI), the USA water pollution, and the European wildfires

Environmental disasters and the way information is disseminated could affect democratic progress and the information ecosystem through rising polarization and reveal even targeted campaigns from rival entities that aim to destabilize the country experiencing the environmental disaster. According to the Anthropocene, it is evident that the anthropogenic impact on Earth cannot be erased, leading to a new world in which humanity must understand that its actions will affect the environment, thus leading to a non-sustainable future and multiple threats, which can be constructed through the help of misinformation in the AI era, as research related to Securitization Theory (ST) has already shown. Through the research of the online news discourse of 12 prominent news outlets via Ideological Discourse Analysis (IDA) of three different case studies from around the globe, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the water pollution in the USA, and the European wildfires by focusing mainly on the recent Greek disastrous wildfires, the current paper aims to provide an analysis of what the online misinformation connected to these case studies’ environmental concerns is and how the misinformation is shaping the reality. The research’s findings enhance our understanding of environmental misinformation and provide valuable insights that can lead to new approaches and policies to tackle misinformation, mistrust, and democratic and environmental decline.