The death of Queen Elizabeth II exposed the way in which disinformation finds its way when news events occur and how malicious actors take advantage to sow confusion.
As the UK mourned the passing of its monarch, users shared digitally altered photos and misleading content on social media, attributing her death – at age 96 – to causes other than old age, including Covid vaccines and Hillary Clinton.
However, the disinformation tactics used after the Buckingham Palace announcement on September 8 were mainly old tricks adapted to current history in order to get the falsehoods imposed.
Similar false claims have been spread in the wake of other big news stories, such as Russia’s war in Ukraine or the death of Jeffrey Epstein, with the US conspiracy movement QAnon showing its involvement.
“Familiarity leads to increased credibility,” says Gordon Pennycook, a behavioral scientist at the University of Regina in Canada.
well crafted tactics
Red flags of misinformation were raised as soon as the queen was under medical supervision, when Twitter accounts impersonated news outlets and posted false updates about her condition.
The pace of fake news accelerated after the announcement of his death.
“People around the world were aware of and shocked by the queen’s death, giving disinformation spreaders a virtually limitless array of false narratives to choose from,” explains Dan Evon of the nonprofit News Literacy Project. NLP).
Several examples: An old video of dancers outside Buckingham Palace circulated as if it were an Irish celebration of the monarch’s death. Or a social media post purporting to show former US President Donaecho on the deaths of well-known figures like actress Betty White or comedian Bob Saget.ld Trump claiming that the queen had knighted him. Or a manipulated photo in which Meghan Markle wore a T-shirt with the legend “the queen is dead”.
Some blamed the queen’s death on vaccines against covid-19, an accusation that anti-vaccine militants have made.
Others name Hillary Clinton as the culprit, claiming that the queen announced before she died that she had information that could dirty the former presidential candidate and former head of US diplomacy.
These types of falsehoods have been attributed to other world leaders. It is a traditional meme that promotes a conspiracy theory according to which Clinton is killing his political opponents.
“When big events happen, people in different communities, particularly activists, try to figure out if there’s an angle there that they can exploit,” says Mike Caulfield, a researcher at the Center for the Informed Public (CIP) at the University of Washington.
QAnon supporters appropriated the queen’s death to their beliefs about the child sex trafficking mafia, presenting a series of unsubstantiated claims and portraying the event as proof of the legitimacy of their movement.
“The royal family, given Prince Andrew’s well-recognized connections to Jeffrey Epstein, has always been the talk of the QAnon crowd,” says Rachel Moran, a postdoctoral scholar at CIP.
A popular video in QAnon circles, in which followers say a naked boy is seen escaping from Buckinham Palace, is in fact an old commercial for a fictional TV show. However, it was spread on TikTok.
In the week following the queen’s death, media intelligence firm Zignal Labs tracked more than 76,000 mentions of the late monarch linking her to Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, both convicted of sexual assault, both on social media and online. on websites, radio broadcasts and traditional media.
Narratives linking the queen to pedophilia, Clinton and vaccinations were mentioned 42,000, 8,000 and 7,000 times, respectively.
Avoid disinformation
The avalanche of news stories about the queen, and her global influence, explain some of the conspiracy theories’ fixation on her death, says Karen Douglas, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent, who studies why people believe these stories.
“Accepting mundane explanations for a major event might be less convincing or appealing,” he says.
However, there are ways to resist falling for false information. Organizations like NLP and CIP recommend cross-checking what is posted online with information from trusted sources before sharing.
“Even a few moments of reflection can often make a big difference,” says Pennycook.
By Bill McCarthy
