Towards Greenwashing Detection - a Deep Learning-Based Mechanism for Greenwashing Identification

Project of the team of Greenwashing, DSSGx@the University of Warwick, Summer 2023

Abstract

Greenwashing is a growing form of climate misinformation, designed to distract the public from the environmentally harmful activities of companies such as fossil fuel producers. Greenwashing strategies are typically subtle, not containing outright falsehoods but painting a misleading picture by emphasising environmentally beneficial activities while neglecting to communicate that the net effect of the company’s activities are negative. The subtle nature of these distracting tactics makes detection of greenwashing challenging. Leveraging the multimodal features of posts on social media, we built a machine learning-based pipeline for detecting Green Messaging and assessing the potential of companies engaging in Greenwashing

Partners

This project is a collaboration between Dr John Cook, Dr Geoffrey Supran, Algorithmic Transparency Institute and Data Science for Social Good Fellowship UK.

Contributors

The Contributors are listed alphabetically.

• Allassan Tchangmena A Nken
• Bettina Roethlin
• Lu Zhang
• Manan Suri

In collaboration with Project Manager: Senna Ma and Technical Mentor: James Tripp