Steering Great Barrier Reef climate science narratives through the mediasphere in a time of misinformation

The threat of climate change to the health of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is undisputed. However, news reporting about the GBR in recent years has often failed to accurately convey the risks to the reef of a heating climate, sometimes leading to discourses of climate change denial across the hybrid media landscape. This paper presents one such case where an Australian government research agency reporting about the state of coral cover on the GBR inadvertently fed into problematic reporting, and a spike in online climate science denial in the days following its release. The study traces media coverage and social media commentary following the report’s release, demonstrating how science communication became political and played into climate science denial online. We provide recommendations for the diverse communicators charged with the challenging task of translating, reporting and disseminating science information to help avoid unwittingly bolstering climate denial narratives.