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UK Riots: Top five instigators that post climate misinformation too
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Last month, a series of riots broke out in England and Northern Ireland. Organised by the far right, they were triggered by misinformation around the tragic murder of three young girls in Southport, England.
Posters on X made false claims about the killer, who was born in Wales, soon after news of the attack broke, including that he was a recent migrant, a Muslim, a refugee, or other vocabulary understood to be racist or far right dog whistles. This misinformation is widely considered to be a key cause of the riots, which in many cases targeted Mosques and Muslim communities.
Many of the accounts that instigated the violence are no strangers to climate misinformation. This data monitor covers some of those accounts, why they get involved in the influencer phenomenon known as ‘issue stacking’, and what we can do about the real world harms that come from it.
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Content warning: Extreme hate against multiple protected groups including women, people of colour and LGBTQIA+ identities. Reproductions of violence
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Andrew Tate
On Southport: One of the most widespread false posts about the attack before the riots took place came from alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate. Tate falsely claimed the killer is an “illegal migrant” to his 10 million followers, many of which will be his main audience of young men and boys.
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Laurence Fox
On Southport: Leader of extreme right party Reclaim UK, Fox initially retweeted Spofforth’s misinformation to his over 500,000 followers. Fox then doubled down by making more unsubstantiated and false claims. These include claims that the killer was on a terror watch list, arrived undocumented on a boat in 2023, and that the police should not try to stop those that are
exposing “extreme elements of the Muslim community.” Then followed a stream of not-so-subtle calls for violence plus further spreading of misinformation, even after correct nformation emerged.
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Climate and other activity: Grimes’s posts on X, Facebook and Instagram are highly xenophobic and sometimes transphobic, so it’s no surprise that much of his commentary on climate change has similar undertones. He has complained about “climate reparations” helping “give to the foreigner” and government “funding migrants” while “our own people freeze”. His criticism of climate policy focuses on foreign states like China as a reason not to decarbonise. A recent post brings a lot of issues together, outright criticising net zero policy alongside those on migration, taxes, islamists, “trans ideology” and “critical race theory”.
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Nigel Farage
On Southport: While Reform UK’s leader stopped short of out and out misinformation on the Southport tragedy, his whataboutery stance is widely considered to have contributed to the violence that took place thereafter. His post took place on Facebook as well as X. As with all posts analysed in this newsletter, they remain on the platforms without any kind of fact check, note or disclaimer.
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Climate and other activity: Farage is the leader of a fossil fuel backed political party that pledges to scrap the UK’s legally binding net zero target. Farage himself has repeatedly cast doubt on climate science, though lately has shifted to delayism, criticising the UK’s legally binding net zero by 2050 policy. His party focuses heavily on lowering legal and illegal migration to the UK, but Reform UK’s manifesto also included banning “transgender ideology” in schools and leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
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WHY 'ISSUE STACKING' PAYS
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Examining the crossovers in these disinfluencers’ newsfeeds helps us shine a light on the phenomenon known as issue stacking. This is the simultaneous posting about multiple
emotionally-charged issues, usually through the lens of grievance politics. Most commonly, climate misinformation is brought into a curated list of issues by associated specifically with right or far-right politics. Issues can include any of, and not limited to, rejection of LGBTQIA+ identities, denial of Covid-19, denial of the Holocaust, and conspiracy theories about vaccinations, QAnon, the New World Order, and so on. With climate in particular, this is an effective strategy, as in principle climate and nature policies are broadly popular. After all, no one likes dirty air.
This strategy works because social media companies make posting provocative, controversial and false content profitable; sometimes known as the ‘attention economy’ or, in the case of posting outrageous content, the ‘outrage economy’. Posting emotional content brings you to the top of newsfeeds that are geared towards engagement instead of accuracy. This clout then provides a platform from which to build income streams through advertising revenue, merchandise, and additional avenues for monetization.
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Unfortunately, tragic events like the Southport murders are among the best opportunities for engagement in the outrage economy, as it’s a
prime time for people to react quickly and passionately to new information. It’s also a time where platforms are at their weakest. New information is generated too fast for humans to keep up, and machine learning doesn’t know how to respond to new events it has not been trained on. The same happens with climate change - extreme weather events and policy announcements are followed by spikes of misinformation to frame the news.
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X’s policies are not up to scratch, and even where it has them, they are not properly enforced. This is no more evident than in the fact that while Facebook and Youtube suspended the commercial news aggregator that accidentally spread the attacker’s false name, the channel remains on
X. One notable area of policy is that of prolific misinformation spreaders like these chancers, who are repeat offenders. Because of issue stacking, dealing with one area of harm usually helps dealing with others too. Deplatforming the most extreme accounts - instead of bringing them back like X has - would go a long way. A second level of intervention involves, de-amplifying the most harmful content by reducing its spread to so many newsfeeds in the algorithm. Most platforms do this in some way - though usually very poorly enforced on climate misinformation. X, meanwhile, no longer has any visible misinformation policy. Media literacy and promoting correct information are also important ways a platform can contribute.
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Twitter (X’s predecessor) had a long-running tagline “What’s Happening?”. Unfortunately, X is no longer a reliable answer to that question. But despite the deterioration of information quality on X, the platform receives a disproportionate amount of attention for breaking news. Journalists, politicians and others that rely on X would do well to seek alternatives. Some already are.
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Advertisers in particular should be wary of the brand safety risk X presents to their business model. Advertisers hold power in this situation, as platforms need revenue streams to operate. Many major advertisers have already fled platforms and other media that presents a brand safety risk, including climate misinformation.
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New academic study - repetition of climate misinformation can influence belief. In one of the first studies of its kind, Jiang et al in Plos One found that even one repetition of a false climate claim can influence people, including those that endorse climate science in the first place.
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New UN climate rapporteur stresses importance of information integrity in tackling climate change. The report, written to inform nation states’ interpretation of the Paris agreement, underscores the importance of tackling climate misinformation, as well as the responsibilities of governments and businesses to proactively disseminate correct information.
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Bots take advantage of the news cycle on X. Global Witness found a list of 45 bot-like accounts exploiting current events. First found tweeting partisan support for political parties during the UK general election, these accounts have moved on to posting gendered disinformation, racism and conspiracies in response to new current events.
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After eight years of leading the pack, Facebook pulls the plug on Crowdtangle. It’s finally happened, and we can’t overstate how big a blow this is for platform transparency. A new website, RIP Crowdtangle, covers why it matters. Or you could read our June issue on why it matters for climate misinformation research specifically.
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If you have any investigative leads CAAD should explore, want to find out more about our research and intel, or interview one of our members, please
email contact@caad.info.
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