Climate disinformation and moral distortion

Disinformation is commonly understood as the distortion, omission or framing of facts, in the interest of deceiving. But does disinformation merely stem from an untruthful representation of facts, or can it also involve a distortion of morals? This question is not easily answered: while factual information can be untruthfully represented, it is less straightforward what ‘moral distortion’ might involve. In this paper we investigate the nature of moral distortion, by scrutinizing two case-studies from climate discourse. We argue that moral distortion involves the selective representation of morally relevant facts, which leaves an audience with a biased appreciation of an issue, even though the sender of information positions themselves as a trustworthy partner in public inquiry. We clarify how moral distortion relates to ‘moral corruption’, ‘greenwashing’, and other types of environmental disinformation, and address the objection that the cultural relativity of moral claims shields them from criticism.