In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the recent riots that have taken place across the UK and looks at the effects that spreading disinformation can cause.
According to the BBC, the police are on standby for possible further unrest over this weekend, so I thought I would discuss what we can learn about the importance of disinformation, as this is what caused the recent riots. In any incident business continuity management professionals prepare for or have to manage, there is likely to be an element of disinformation, so the more we can recognise its possibility and prepare to deal with it, the better our response will be.
The first lesson about the riots was that they were purely caused by disinformation, and a peaceful vigil for the three young girls who were killed turned into a riot with attacks on the police and the local mosque. The disinformation, which seemed to come via an online ‘news website’ Channel3Now, was that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker who came to the UK in a ‘small boat’ in 2023. None of this was true; the alleged attacker has been named as Axel Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff, Wales, and is not Muslim. The false information was passed on millions of times on social media and then exploited by right-wing commentators, encouraging followers to protest against asylum seekers. The police took some time to right the disinformation about the perpetrator of the stabbing, and the protest gained a life of its own as an anti-asylum seeker protest.
For disinformation to work, it has to play into an existing narrative or belief. It doesn’t need to be held by the majority of citizens, but it has to be enough, and it has to be an issue people believe strongly in to have traction and encourage people to take action. According to the Economist Newspaper, ‘only 17% of people now say that it is very important for being truly British to have been born in Britain, down from 48% in 1995’, and polling by YouGov showed that only 12% of UK voters believe the disorder is justified. We need to understand what the narratives about our organisation are, even if they are untrue or unfounded, as an incident may play into those who believe a narrative, which could lead to a reputational issue. If people strongly believe that something is true, it may be difficult in the heat of an incident to disprove what people believe as facts.
Politicians, leaders, and prominent figures will always try to exploit an incident which aligns with their beliefs and can increase their popularity, notoriety, or cause. I like this quote from the Independent: ‘Willingness of people with power and influence to exploit or encourage the worst instincts of their supporters. This is what populists have always done and it’s been going on since at least Roman times.’. Tommy Robinson, Andrew Page, and Laurence Fox have all been named in numerous articles as ‘stoking the flames’ and commenting on the incident. Elon Musk has been having a spat with Keir Starmer over X. In one post, he responded to a video of Starmer’s speech, which blamed large social media companies for fuelling online attacks, with the single word ‘insane.’ In another instance, Musk wrote ‘civil war is inevitable’ in reaction to videos showing a crowd igniting fires and setting off fireworks, and he branded the prime minister ‘two-tier Keir’ and questioned if it was ‘Britain or the Soviet Union’ after a man was apparently arrested over Facebook comments.
In our identification of stakeholders and categorisation during an incident, we need to identify if there are influencers, politicians, or celebrities who may comment either negatively or positively on the incident. Their involvement, especially if it is someone with many followers and opinions, such as Musk, will likely amplify our incident and add an additional layer of complexity to it. The best way to deal with external comments from ‘famous people’ is perhaps a subject for another bulletin, but we should recognise that this could happen and factor it into our response.
One of the reasons for the spread of disinformation and the desire to spread information which may not be true is money. The more followers you have, the more likes, and the more your posts are shared, this can translate to social media paying you as an influencer. If you can be the first to share a story, your version goes out and can lead to a payout. There is, therefore, an incentive to share salacious or sensational stories, even if they may not be true, as they can be worth money. Again, there is not much we as business continuity professionals can do about this but be aware of it, and try over time to position our social media and website as a recognised and genuine source of information and put our own version of the story out on social media quickly, to counter any misinformation.
Of all the news sites I read when researching this bulletin, I didn’t read of any nation-state amplification of some of the misinformation associated with this incident. It is well documented that hostile states will amplify misinformation that they believe will be detrimental to their adversaries and damage their national cohesion or undermine public support for a cause.
A way to counter the effect of disinformation is to amplify the good news and human stories associated with the incident. After the riots in Southport, I was very heartened to see lots of people turn up with brooms and barrows to clear up the streets and make good walls and fences used as missiles. There was also the story, which had my daughter in tears, of the care worker Brendan Nwabichie, a Nigerian student at Teesside University who came off shift only to find his car was completely burned out and flipped on its roof. Very quickly, a crowdfunding site was set up, and £60,000 was raised to buy him a new car, with the remainder going to local charities. The large counter-protests, in many cases, greatly outnumbered anti-asylum protesters and showed that the rioters were a minority and didn’t represent mainstream society.
Good news stories and ‘hero narratives’ are very important during an incident, as they show a positive response to the incident. We should be on the lookout for these stories during an incident, as they may be overlooked in the response.
At present, there is little the government can do to regulate or hold social media companies to account for the messages that go out over social media. The Online Safety Act, which was passed this year, will not be in place until 2025. Individuals have been arrested for their online posts, but this has only been a very low number to date.
We mustn’t in all this talk about riots and disinformation, forget the three young victims of this attack, Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine. This whole incident has taken away from their suffering and overshadowed the grief of their loved ones. Disinformation created many victims in this incident—the police, those who live in the area of riots who have been frightened or had their property destroyed, and also those who were injured and killed in the original attack.
