“A culture of fear”: Bushfire survivor tells Senate inquiry how climate misinformation fuels trauma and silences voices

Australia’s escalating misinformation crisis is not an abstract problem measured in bot networks, engagement metrics or parliamentary submissions.

For bushfire survivor Fiona Lee, it is a personal assault — one that began when her family home outside Taree was destroyed in the Black Summer fires and continues every time she dares to speak publicly about the role of climate change.

Appearing before the Senate inquiry into information integrity on climate and energy, Lee revealed that behind coordinated misinformation campaigns could be a real person trying to rebuild their life.

“I’m a Black Summer bushfire survivor, and my family home burned to the ground outside of Taree on the eighth of November 2019,” she told senators. “We lost our home with about 1.4 degrees of warming, and I’m very fearful of what the bushfire seasons will look like when my young child is my age.”

This fear — and a determination to protect others — is why Lee joined Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action (BSCA) and began speaking publicly. But from the moment she did she became a target not of debate, but of sustained online abuse.

“It’s become an unbelievable part of life for me and people who speak up, and it feels pretty targeted and relentless.”

Lee described social media comment threads filled with taunts, fabricated claims, climate-denial conspiracies and strings of laughing emojis — “the laziest way to troll”, as BSCA put it in their submission — but devastating in effect when deployed on posts about someone’s loss.

“I tolerate this, but I don’t think I should have to… I don’t expect to be abused and met with untrue information, cruel comments, conspiracy theories and outright denial of the role that climate change played in the disaster that destroyed our home.”

“These attacks compound our trauma, silence people and create a culture of fear.”

“When I go on social media and I see hundreds of comments… calling me names and flat out denying climate change is happening, it’s obviously really hurtful.”

A movement born from fire – and now targeted by disinformation

Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action formed after the Tathra fire in 2018 and now represents more than 800 survivors and 2,500 supporters. It has become a prominent voice linking lived experience to climate policy.

Its members come from communities devastated by Black Summer, the 2013 Blue Mountains fires, Black Saturday and the 2003 Canberra fires. Their message is consistent: Australia has always had bushfires, but climate change is making them more frequent, more extreme and more deadly.

As BSCA CEO Serena Joyner told the committee: “That’s why we focus our work on advocating for faster action on climate to bring down emissions and slow our rate of warming. We don’t want to see a future where the nine-month long Black Summer fire season is considered normal.”

But visibility has come with a surge of targeted misinformation and harassment. In their submission, BSCA warn that mis- and disinformation is eroding the social licence needed to protect communities:

“Misinformation and disinformation… are responsible for substantial polarisation that causes social tensions and conflicts in communities and families, as well as obstructing desperately needed public policy progress on climate change and energy.”

“Bushfire survivors are targeted by trolls… We have seen responses vary from pure climate denial, to bushfire mis and disinformation, and sadly, very often, victim-blaming and abuse.”

Examples are not difficult to find. On the BSCA Facebook page, in response to an open letter marking the Black Saturday anniversary, one commenter wrote:

“What a load of bull… the reason the fire started was an electrical fault… the reason why it travel [sic] 20k in 20 minutes was because there was no burn offs in the area for over 10 years.”

During the mid-north coast floods earlier this year, TikTok brought another strain of conspiracy:

“OH!!!!! So it’s not cloud seeding!???? Ohhhhhhhhh!!! LOOK DEEPER LADY!!! It’s only ‘climate science’ because yr naive… are you aware of a total genocide happening before your eyes?? Or is your urban reality an existence?

Despite the toll this belittling and denial takes on her mental health, Lee told senators she remains “steadfast in my determination to share” the science showing that climate change is worsening bushfire conditions.

But she was unequivocal about where she believes responsibility lies for enabling the spread of harassment and misinformation.

“Social media companies have built the systems that amplify outrage and reward harassment of people like me because it drives engagement and profit… They’ve designed this problem, and so I think they now need to help fix it.”

She called for a suite of reforms:
– transparent reporting of platform actions,
– rapid removal of abusive content,
– real consequences for users who spread harassment or disinformation, and
– obligations on website owners to moderate comment sections.

Read also: “The wheels fell off:” Farmer tells Senate how misinformation killed a community battery project

And: ‘Sloppy’, ‘misleading’, and funded by whom? Anti-renewable group under fire at Senate misinformation inquiry

And: “Dead Man Walking”: IPA’s climate obstruction on full display at Senate misinformation inquiry

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