Obstruction Through Conspiracy - A Computational Multimodal Content Analysis of TikTok Climate Misinformation Narratives

Abstract

This thesis investigates how climate-related conspiracy narratives are constructed and emotionally mobilized on TikTok. Addressing a research gap in climate claims related to conspiracies, as well as visual and multimodal misinformation, the study explores how TikTok’s unique multimodal features, which combine visual elements, sound, and text, shape the construction, emotional appeal, and potential influence on climate-related attitudes and actions. The research is guided by two questions: (1) What topics emerge in the TikTok video corpus on climate and weather modification? (2) How are conspiracy claims constructed through visuals, text, sound, and emotion, and what interpretive and emotional orientations do they invoke? Methodologically, the study employs a mixed-method design that combines large-scale computational multimodal topic modeling with qualitative framing analysis. Utilizing a dataset of 7,658 TikTok posts collected through keyword and hashtag-based scraping, the study initially employs unsupervised AI models (CLIP, Sentence-BERT, and OpenL3) to identify 27 thematically coherent topics across visual, textual, and audio modalities using BERTopic. A subset of 1,220 posts is then analyzed in-depth through multimodal conspiracy framing, drawing on theories of framing, conspiracy, social semiotics, and the sociology of emotion. The findings reveal a distinct form of climate conspiracy on TikTok; one that affirms the reality, urgency, and human causation of climate change, but attributes it to covert technological interventions by powerful actors, typically state institutions. Rather than denying climate change, these narratives frame it as deliberately engineered. Key findings include: (1) these claims fall outside established climate misinformation taxonomies; (2) they invert dominant contrarian arguments by flipping the script, potentially complicating detection efforts; and (3) they redirect attention through epistemic emotions like curiosity, prompting investigation and “dot-connecting”. This emotional redirection sustains conspiracy engagement and may divert attention from constructive climate responses. Enabled by a multimodal and computational approach, these insights expand our understanding of how climate misinformation evolves and adapts to audiovisual platforms like TikTok.