The Undergrid: Countering Information Pollution with Story Algorithm Roleplaying Cycles (StoryARCs)
Alison HumphreyIncoming Postdoctoral FellowAboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC)Concordia University
Research poster presented at the Electrify Society Summit, powered by Volt-Age, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, 5-6 May 2026.
Introduction
One of the most stubborn barriers to clean energy adoption – as powerful as cost, capacity, or connections – is stories.
Manufactured climate disinformation engineers fear and misdirects anger. AI-powered persuasion campaigns systematically target the uptake of electrotech in the communities where energy sovereignty matters most.
The Undergrid responds with research-creation: a solarpunk storyworld where solar power is a literal superpower, and where cutting through information pollution is an ability young people and their communities can practice through play.
Objective
This project develops and pilots the first ever StoryARC (Story Algorithm Roleplaying Cycle): a research-creation toolkit using participatory speculative fiction – centred on The Undergrid storyworld – to build community capacity to recognize and counter the disinformation delaying clean energy uptake.
Methods
The Undergrid is a sci-fi storyworld in which solar power is an embodied superpower – and AI persuasion swarms called Circuitburners are its kryptonite. Participants create characters and record video journal entries in a three-act StoryARC (Figure 1).
Act 1 presents the "pros" for joining the network.
Act 2 runs the "cons": a disinformation loop requiring active debunking.
Act 3 branches to empowerment or a circuit-broken dead end.
Grounded in inoculation theory (Roozenbeek et al.), the toolkit includes a dataset of real-world "cons" drawn from taxonomies of disinformation (Cook; Lamb et al.), each with a fact–myth–fallacy debunking analysis, plus a tinkering kit of LEDs, rechargeable batteries, and augmented reality filters for do-it-yourself visual effects (DIY VFX).
The project is being developed at Concordia University’s AbTeC research-creation studio-lab, in partnership with Debajehmujig Storytellers, an Anishinaabe multi-arts organization on Manitoulin Island. As a non-Indigenous researcher, the author’s participatory approach is developed in ongoing collaboration with Debajehmujig, and informed by its community-based narrative-knowledge practice of creating original work that bridges cultures, generations, and territories.
Results
The primary result to date is a designed intervention, The Undergrid StoryARC toolkit, composed of a three-act participatory story algorithm (Figure 1), a curated dataset of real-world climate disinformation examples, each with a fact–myth–fallacy debunking analysis, and AI-generated visual development illustrating the embodied logic of solar energy as a superpower (Figures 2–5).
This framework extends methods from the author's Shadowpox doctoral project (Vanier CGS; Governor General's Gold Medal, 2024), which piloted a participatory science-fiction storytelling approach to misinformation resilience with youth participants across Canada, the UK, and South Africa.
Figure 1. The three-act Story Algorithm Roleplaying Cycle (StoryARC) of The Undergrid.
Figure 2. Harvesting solar energy. Concept art for The Undergrid (generated with Google Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview, 2026).
Figure 5. The Circuitburner network: an AI persuasion swarm working to deceive the undecided and destroy the Undergrid. Concept art for The Undergrid (generated with Google Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview, 2026).
Conclusions
▶ Communities need narrative capacity to defang manufactured fear, uncertainty and doubt – alongside the infrastructure capacity to generate and distribute clean power.
▶ Addressing this challenge calls for tools that engage the imagination.
▶ The Undergrid StoryARC is one such tool.
▶ An initial pilot with Debajehmujig Storytellers is planned for 2026, with additional community pilots in Canada and abroad through 2028, working toward an openly licensed, adaptable framework for educators and organizations at the intersection of clean energy literacy and disinformation resilience.
References
- Bond, K., Walter, D. & Butler-Sloss, S. (2025). The Electrotech Revolution. Ember.
- Cook, J. (2020). Deconstructing Climate Science Denial [FLICC]. In Holmes, D. & Richardson, L.M. (Eds.), Research Handbook in Communicating Climate Change. Edward Elgar.
- Eisenson, M. et al. (2024). Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind and EVs. Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
- Kimmerer, R.W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions.
- Humphrey, A. (2023). The Shadowpox Storyworld as Citizen Science Fiction: Building Co-immunity through Participatory Mixed-Reality Storytelling [Doctoral dissertation, York University]. Governor General's Gold Medal 2024; York Dissertation Prize 2024.
- Humphrey, A. (Forthcoming). Citizen Science Fiction: Regenerative Roleplay for a Tragedy of the Commons. In Campos, Bouttier, Montin & Lapointe (Eds.) Microscopic Life in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature and Performance. Open Book Publishers.
- Lamb, W.F. et al. (2020). Discourses of Climate Delay. Global Sustainability.
- Lewandowsky, S. et al. (2020). The Debunking Handbook. https://sks.to/db2020
- Lewis, J.E. (2023). The Future Imaginary. In B. Chattopadhyay, G. Dillon, I. Lavender & T.J. Taylor (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms. Routledge.
- Oreskes, N. & Conway, E.M. (2011). Merchants of Doubt. Bloomsbury.
- Roozenbeek, J., Traberg, C.S. & Van der Linden, S. (2022). Technique-Based Inoculation against Real-World Misinformation. Royal Society Open Science.
- Spampatti, T. et al. (2023). Psychological Inoculation Strategies to Fight Climate Disinformation across 12 Countries. Nature Human Behaviour.
- Westervelt, A. (2024). Information Pollution: A Primer. Drilled.media.
- Zanartu, F. et al. (2024). A Technocognitive Approach to Detecting Fallacies in Climate Misinformation. Scientific Reports.
Acknowledgements
This research is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through a Canada Postdoctoral Research Award.
The author is an incoming Postdoctoral Fellow at the research-creation studio-lab Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), Concordia University, under the supervision of Prof. Jason Edward Lewis.
