Information abhors a vacuum.
So when the police and media, for legal reasons, put out only a few details about the Southport attacker – that he was 17 years old and born in Cardiff – misinformation rushed in instead.
As far-right groups then began reposting the false claims and organising on messaging app Telegram, it made for a violent outcome.
The misinformation started almost as soon as news of the knife attack on a Taylor Swift dance workshop for children broke on Monday, 29 July. Accounts on X, formerly Twitter, quickly began promoting false narratives about the attacker’s nationality and religion.
Anti-migrant sentiment goes viral
One account, European Invasion, which has more than 360,000 followers, said the suspect was “a Muslim immigrant” – a tweet that earned nearly four million impressions.
Andrew Tate, the controversial influencer, follows that account, and amplified that false narrative, saying that the attacker was an “illegal migrant”.
The misinformation spread quickly, and social networks were quickly inundated with a tidal wave of similar content, almost immediately after the attack.
And then a very specific piece of misinformation appeared: that the attacker was called “Ali Al-Shakati”, and had arrived in the UK illegally on a boat last year. None of this is true, according to police statements and Sky News’ investigation.
Data from social media monitoring tool Talkwalker shows that on 29 July, there was a surge of engagements on posts that mention “Southport” and Islam-related terms, including “Asylum”, “Muslim”, “Islam”, “Islamic” or “Sharia”. Engagements on posts mentioning the fake name also ticked up.
The name was initially posted on X in a now-deleted post. But it became popularised when an account called Channel 3 Now picked it up.
Channel 3 Now appears to produce clickbait articles to drive advertising revenue. The only author listed on its site links to a Facebook page with four friends, one of which is a spam account, another posting exclusively about Channel 3 Now.
Its social media pages have either been repurposed from previous names and branding or are relatively new and have few followers.
Producers of spam content frequently repurpose, buy and sell accounts, and this alone is not evidence of a concerted effort to spread disinformation.
After Channel 3 Now, larger outlets repeated the false name – including the Russian state-controlled news channel RT.
The false name went viral – not as much as the general anti-Muslim sentiment, but this was a much more narrow claim. And it helped to solidify the narrative that an immigrant was to blame for the attack.
“Enough is Enough”
The febrile, anti-migrant and anti-Islam atmosphere collided with another separate, but related online movement.
Posters calling for a protest to take place in Southport on Tuesday, 30 July began circulating widely.
Merseyside Police specifically blamed the English Defence League (EDL), founded by Tommy Robinson, for causing trouble.
They said: “a large group of people – believed to be supporters of the English Defence League” began throwing items at the police.
Online commentators – including Robinson – have said the EDL is defunct. Robinson said on X: “The riots are by local residents fed up. Nothing to do with the EDL which closed down over a decade ago.”
The EDL is largely defunct but the contemporary far right, which shares an ideology and includes many of the same individuals, still operates in clusters and networks under various banners.
On Tuesday morning, ahead of the protests, one poster titled “Enough is Enough”, bearing a handprint and a silhouette of figures holding hands, was shared by a known-far-right activist with links to Patriotic Alternative (PA). The group is a successor organisation to the British National Party (BNP). Members of PA were identifiable in footage taken at the eventual demonstration.
A poster that was shared on Telegram by a known far-right activist with links to Patriotic Alternative (PA).
The poster was then reposted on X, where posts are amplified by bigger accounts. This is not uncommon with material of this kind, which frequently originates in closed groups or fringe platforms such as Telegram, before being disseminated to mainstream audiences on larger sites.
The most viral post disseminated this way contained a poster originating from a TikTok account with 144 followers. The user who reshared it has over 90,000 followers on X, and attracted over 485,000 views.
This began to play into an even wider, more mainstream ecosystem.
The chatter grew louder – specifically the question about what we are being told by authorities, who again, could not offer more detail due to legal reasons.
A writer from the Spectator posted on X saying that a police officer told him what the public was being told was ‘managed’.
Tommy Robinson, the anti-Islam activist, cited that tweet approvingly, among the many posts he made about the murders and subsequent riot.
Then an elected MP, Nigel Farage, posted this to X as well, in the evening of July 30, saying: “I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us. I don’t know the answer to that: I think it’s a fair and legitimate question.”
The police could not tell the public everything – it would risk collapsing any future trial, potentially meaning any accused could walk free – but the truth was not being withheld.
But that is the background to the protests that quickly morphed into a riot in Southport in a matter of hours.
In a statement posted to their website on Wednesday, 31 July, Channel 3 Now issued an apology.
“I am writing to sincerely apologize for the misleading information published in a recent article on our website, Channel3 NOW. We deeply regret any confusion or inconvenience this may have caused”, wrote the editor in chief.
But the damage had already been done.
Violence erupts outside mosque. Pic: PA
It is a complex interaction, of immediate online speculation; then specific misinformation, done for monetary or geopolitical gain; far-right networks organising on Telegram and other platforms; mainstream accounts encouraging people to believe the truth is being hidden.
The result? Chaos and violence on the streets of Southport.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
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