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Acknowledgements

Regarding this report we would like to thank the principal writer Analyst Nick Boosey. Support was provided by Lead Editor Sean Moran, Head of Content Jaye Sergeant, Head of Disinformation Research Joshua Tyler and Analyst Skylor Ko.

Glossary of Key Terms

Activists: Individuals or groups who campaign for political or social change, often through organised efforts such as public demonstrations. 

Content Aggregators: People or accounts that collect and disseminate content from various sources, usually on a large scale in one place, typically around a specific topic.

Disinformation: Intentionally false content that is spread to cause harm, it can be motivated by three factors: to make money; to have political influence, or to incite trouble and discord for its own sake.

Extreme Right: Those on the far right who reject all forms of democratic governance, including majority rule and popular sovereignty, often espousing authoritarian sentiments or expressing affinity for 20th century fascism.

Far Right: A broad term denoting those hostile to liberal democracy. Generally entailing four elements: nationalism, xenophobia, law and order, and welfare chauvinism.

Hate speech: Communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, colour, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation.

Influencer: An individual with large followings on the internet who can leverage such following to shape the views of their audience.

Influencer: An individual with large followings on the internet who can leverage such following to shape the views of their audience. 

Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim hatred or ideologically driven prejudice.

Malinformation: Genuine information that is shared with an intent to cause harm. 

Misinformation: False content, shared by a person unaware of the fact it is misleading or false.

Radical Right: Those on the far right who are hostile to elements of liberal democracy such as the rule of law or minority rights but are broadly accepting of the essence of democracy.

Introduction

On Monday the 29th of July 2024, the northern English city of Southport was left reeling by a knife attack on a children’s dance class that left three young girls dead. The tragedy quickly reached viral prominence online, and narratives emerged that the attack was terror related, that the culprit was Muslim, that they had entered the UK illegally on a small boat. These narratives were entirely speculative but filled a void in public discourse left by the British police’s standard procedure of withholding information about minors in custody from the public. The initial false claims were quickly laundered through wider social media discourse, via a disparate collection of influencers, commentators and sources claiming to be authoritative news outlets. Now, with the veneer of credibility, these falsehoods generated a surge in vitriolic discourse around immigration and multiculturalism in Britain, spurred on by inflammatory comments from figures on the mainstream, radical and extreme political right.

Within hours of the attack itself, that wave of angry, xenophobic online discourse had become manifest in calls for mobilisation and violence by far-right agitators and extremists. By 19:45 on Tuesday the 30th of July, violent disorder had broken out near the scene of the attack in Southport. That violence alone left 53 police officers injured and criminal damage to local homes, businesses, and a mosque. Over the following week, similar violent disorder occurred in London, Manchester, Nottingham, Leeds, Hull, Hartlepool, Stoke-on-Trent, Aldershot, and Belfast. As of 1 September 2024, 1,280 people have been arrested for what has been described the UK’s worst social unrest since riots in 2011.

This report by Polis Analysis’ Fake News Observatory will deconstruct the spread of viral falsehoods on X in the wake of the attack. The platform has been selected for investigation because it will show the effects of changes to platform design instituted by Elon Musk since he purchased the platform in 2022. This investigation will show that in the case of the Southport riots X’s monetisation policies and algorithmic recommendation enabled the spread of disinformation, Islamophobia and even outright calls for violence. 

From a methodological standpoint, in contrast to short form video platforms such as TikTok, X also offers a more accessible pool of data. The report can therefore serve as a historical case study in the spread of viral disinformation and misinformation. It is built using a hybrid methodology: combining primary sources i.e. key posts that are still accessible on the platform, and secondary quantitative data, primarily from disinformation researchers and organisations that track online hate speech. The contributions of these entities will receive due acknowledgement throughout the piece, as ultimately this report would not have been possible without their timely and empirically rigorous analysis.

Part 1 of this report will catalogue key actors involved in spreading disinformation and misinformation about the Southport attack, it is designed to capture the diversity of actors involved, as well as the breadth of interests and ideologies that contribute to the dissemination of a viral narratives online.

Part 2 will chronologise the spread and development of the fake Southport narrative itself, showing how it grew to encompass the tropes and stereotypes of the far right, while circumventing efforts by the authorities to maintain an informed public narrative.

Part 2 will chronologise the spread and development of the fake Southport narrative itself, showing how it grew to encompass the tropes and stereotypes of the far right, while circumventing efforts by the authorities to maintain an informed public narrative.

Part 3 will identify X facilitated the spread of viral falsehoods in three regards: algorithmic recommendations, inadequate content moderation and the incentives of monetisation. It will conclude by analysing how and why, in the context of the far right in Britain today, viral disinformation was able to erupt into violent disorder throughout the UK.

Part 4 will conclude by offering readers the latest media literacy tools and practices that can help secure their own digital experience and perhaps in some small way contribute to a healthier information ecosystem online.

Trigger Warning. The Southport attack was an atrocious act of violence which some readers may find distressing. To survey the falsehoods surrounding the attack, this report will survey social media content that is often graphic, racist and Islamophobic.

Trigger Warning. The Southport attack was an atrocious act of violence which some readers may find distressing. To survey the falsehoods surrounding the attack, this report will survey social media content that is often graphic, racist and Islamophobic.

Disclaimer: Many sources relied upon for this publication have been deleted from social media since the events in question and in light of subsequent scrutiny, consequently research has relied on secondary and at times partial data sources. Some primary sources have been compiled from time zones different to that used in the chronology of the piece, which uses GMT, hence any discrepancy between the time presented and the posts themselves in the appendix.

As of Wednesday 30, October 2024, it was revealed by Merseyside Police that Axel Rudakubana was to receive additional charges over his possession of Al Qaeda terrorist materials, as well as the biological toxin ricin. 

This has raised valid questions about whether the case should, either now or originally, be classified as case of terrorism. That question is beyond the scope of this report, however, some actors involved in the spread of the false narratives at the time have sought to exploit these revelations to exonerate themselves for comments made. This report is therefore all the timelier and will establish categorically that their provocative rhetoric was not based on factual sources but instead on viral dissemination of disinformation and misinformation.

PART 1: Key Agents 

The following is a catalogue of eight actors that each played an important role in sharing disinformation and misinformation about the Southport attack. This section will investigate each of their backgrounds and evaluate their history on social media to build a picture of the kinds of actors that can exploit, or be exploited by, fake narratives in online discourse. It is designed so when tracing the chronology (Part 2) readers can refer back and contextualise their interventions in the Southport case against past records, whether those records be moderate political scepticism, an affinity for conspiracy theories or outright racist disinformation and incitement.

The accounts surveyed here ultimately have few unifying characteristics but have been chosen because each held a distinct agency in creating, developing, or amplifying the false narrative that the Southport attacker was a Muslim and an immigrant. Some of these pages are significant because of the sheer scale of their followings, while others contributed small embellishments to the narrative, but at critical moments. It was the cumulative effect of all their interventions, platform tuned to incentivise sensationalist content and facilitate virality, that resulted in the explosion of viral Islamophobic narratives and ultimately caused violence on the streets of Britain. 

The pages have been categorised into two broad categories, anonymous commentary pages, some with clear past records of racist disinformation, and the influencers, activists, and politicians, many of whom have long records of inflammatory politics. This is not an exhaustive survey; indeed, analyses are available that quantify at scale many of the prominent accounts involved but this is designed instead to identify the diversity of actors and agency that collectively created a vast, amorphous and ultimately dangerous viral phenomenon.

PART 1.1: Anonymous commentary accounts

Note: Ordered in terms of audience reach

Note: Channel3now was part of a wider network of pages including a website, Facebook, YouTube and X profiles, some of these had as few 100 followers, others up to 70,000. The figure 3,000 is from the latest available record of its X account. 

A central account to the sharing of misinformation around the Southport attack was @Channel3nownews. The account is part of a network of X, Facebook, YouTube and web pages professing to be a digital news outlet, but sparse public information about its background, writers, editorial process or funding is available online. A detailed investigation by the BBC was able to unearth and identify several individuals involved with the network.

A man named Kevin from Houston, Texas, claimed to be the site’s “verification producer” and described @Channel3NowNews as “an independent digital news media website covering news from around the world.” Kevin subsequently apologised for the network’s involvement in spreading misinformation about the attack Southport, but suggested that its content had originated with a UK-based team. 

The claim that the network is operated by legitimate creators in the UK has not been substantiated, only three individuals have been identified in connection with the organisation, Kevin in Houston, James Lawley, a Nova-Scotia based man running a lawn-cutting company who has not responded to any media requests for comment, and lastly, some of the Facebook pages were linked to an individual in Pakistan. This latter individual seems to have been Farhan Asif, who was briefly arrested for having written the website’s piece on Southport from information he had seen online. Asif has been released without charge. While there has been speculation surrounding the origin of the network’s YouTube pages, which were originally purchased from a Russian language account. There is no evidence that the online network’s pages themselves, or its staff, have connections to Russian state enterprises, and Kevin rejected the suggestion that they might have any “affiliations” with Russia.

Farhan Asif described his work on @Channel3nownews as based on a model of generating news stories from social media content in the US, Britain, and Australia, to secure revenue from Google Advertisements.  Kevin also described the group as a commercial enterprise, seeking to generate revenue from “covering as many stories as possible.” 

@Channel3nownews’s content does not appear have any underlying theme or ideological commitment. Instead, it appears to have been a content aggregator, driven by financial interests and by extension, the pursuit of content that generates engagement on X and other platforms. This is an early indicator of the structural role that financial incentives can play in encouraging creators to make or share content on X not based off of its veracity, but because it can capitalise on, or inflame, viral sentiments. This trend on X will be highly significant when identifying the critical role of @Channel3nownews in the spread of the false Southport narratives.

An account that was a critical early vector in the spread of disinformation about the Southport attack was @EuropeInvasionn. An exploration into its provenance will ultimately show that the account exists primarily to create inflammatory racist disinformation.

@EuropeInvasionn seeks to be entirely anonymous, although recent analyses have potentially revealed the account’s owner and identified it as part of a network of for-profit X accounts run from Dubai. It is possible that much of the account’s content is not created by an active human user, but instead with generative artificial intelligence, suggesting it may in fact be an AI powered content aggregator. 

While the page originally opened in 2010 under handle @makcanerkripto, the page was entirely rebranded in February 2024. This is a common practice on social media. Pre-existing accounts with no verifiable owner are often bought or hacked for a head start in algorithmic recommendation, letting new profiles quickly grow to larger audiences and revenue streams.

@EuropeInvasionn was verified with a blue checkmark, formerly a Twitter-granted mark of legitimacy. Since changes implemented under Elon Musk in November 2022 that mark of legitimacy can be purchased by any account for $8 a month, without proving ones identity or legitimacy. Verification also gives an account’s posts a boost in algorithmic recommendation. Between the 27th of July 27th and the 7th of August, @EuropeInvasionn received more than 133 million impressions on X.

Delving into the posting history of @EuropeInvasionn, one finds a catalogue of inflammatory, racist, and false commentary:

The page regularly falsely attributes violent crimes to immigrants, Muslims, and other ethnic minorities. 

• The page makes explicit calls for violence against ethnic minorities. 

• The page uses quasi-genocidal rhetoric, often referring to Muslims as viruses. 

• Even after its role in the viral falsehoods around Southport attack was exposed, @EuropeInvasionn has continued to post disinformation about violent crimes to falsely ascribe responsibility to Muslims and Immigrants.

  
  

@EuropeInvasionn therefore has a clear past record of disinformation which meet a broader, narrative that foreigners, immigrants and Muslims represent an ‘invasion’ to European and western societies. This content narrative may be purely ideological, but as new research has suggested, the page’s connection to a series of other anonymous X accounts may signal that it is also driven by financial motives, the page acknowledges that it seeks to exploit X’s content recommendation algorithms. 

These findings are essential context for its forthcoming role in the spread of disinformation after Southport.

A larger account that came to occupy a later role in the spread of false narratives around the Southport attack was @Endwokeness. 

The page has no verifiable owner but was founded in July 2022. It is worth noting the quantitative leap in scale between @Endwokeness and the other X commentary pages surveyed here. The page has 3 million followers and receives regular algorithmic boosts from with X owner Elon Musk, who often shares its controversial posts with approving comments to his 200 million followers.

• In many ways akin to @EuropeInvasionn, the page focuses on provocative political commentary, especially mocking and memeing the perceived excesses of the political left: 

• The page routinely mocks and demonises LGBTQ causes and ‘woke’ politics more generally.

• The page champions President-elect Donald Trump, while attacking his opponents with doctored videos and AI generated imagery.

• The page posts provocative, oftentimes grossly racist commentary about immigrants and minorities, specifically around violent crime.

  
  

Overall though its xenophobia and racism is often much more subtle than that of @EuropeInvasionn, @Endwokeness is a considerably larger, more influential vector on X. Although it’s messaging primarily focuses on political mockery, it also posts provocative content that demonises ethnic minorities, often misattributing violent crimes and engendering a narrative of white people as besieged by multiculturalism and Islam. One individual that came to have a outsized role in the spread of viral falsehoods after the Southport attack was @Artemisfornow. This account belongs to Bernadette Spofforth, a 55-year-old woman from Chester.

• Spofforth describes herself as a social commentator, her commentary largely consists of narratives aligning with the political right, particularly anti-establishment scepticism:

• Spofforth previously appeared on internet talk-shows to decry COVID-19 lockdown measures.

• Spofforth’s Twitter profile was suspended in 2021 for violating the platform’s guidelines over the spread of misinformation around COVID-19 medical guidance. In subsequent interviews she confessed that she did in fact, believe the COVID-19 pandemic was real.

• Spofforth regularly tweets her scepticism towards policies combating climate change. 

• Spofforth has posted decrying “the steady march towards a one world government”.

Ever since the Southport falsehoods, for her role in which Spofforth was briefly arrested, she has capitalised on her newfound prominence to brand herself as a free speech champion,  an ordinary citizen silenced by the state.

As will become apparent later when tracing her role in the development of the false Southport narratives, Spofforth is an important example of a genuine social media user who ended up holding considerable agency at a critical moment in the evolution of a viral narrative. Given she has publicly expressed remorse over her role in the phenomenon, Spofforth serves as an important reminder of the responsibility that comes with engaging in public deliberation on social media. Upholding informed and healthy discourses around controversial issues online is not purely the responsibility of public figures with huge followings, for even relatively small profiles can have a dramatic impact.

The next actor who played a role in disseminating and amplifying the Southport disinformation was Laurence Fox, the former actor turned political campaigner. Fox holds a comparably smaller audience relative to some other disseminators involved, but represents an especially political, ideological element of the overall Southport phenomenon. 

After founding his Reclaim Party in 2020, Fox has tried and failed to secure public office on numerous occasions, including the Mayorship of London in 2021, receiving just 1.9% of the vote. For the present case, he represents a medium sized figure in the quasi-professional, commentator-activist class of the political right:

• Fox regularly demonises immigrants and ethnic minorities, particularly sharing a narrative of Britain as a post-multicultural dystopia. To this end he regularly targets

• Mayor Sadiq Kahn on X with racially charged posts, describing London as “a safe space for machete monsters and rapists.”

• In April 2024, Fox was ordered to pay £180,000 in compensation to two social media users he called “paedophiles” in response to their labelling him as racist.

• Fox especially vilifies the LGBTQ movement, regularly calling the rainbow banner a “child mutilation flag” and comparing it to waving swastikas.

  
  

In summary, while Fox does not hold the quantitative clout online as other figures who will come to be involved in the spread of Southport disinformation, he signifies the contrast between those unintentionally sharing ambiguous falsehoods to something approaching statements of ideological commitment. Therefore, Fox’s influence is not necessarily to be found in the reach of his posts, rather in his synthesising of viral trends into more coherent narratives that resonate ideologically with the active, mobilising constituencies of the political right.

Another key actor was Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (known as Tommy Robinson). A figure with a long, controversial history on the fringes of Britain’s political right, Robinson rose to prominence in the 1990s as a figurehead of the English Defence League, a now defunct anti-Muslim street group that originated in football hooliganism. 

Robinson is primarily an activist and occasionally organises large gatherings across the UK. These have recently included a 2023 demonstration at the Cenotaph war memorial in London, which deteriorated into violence, and an event to show his banned film ‘silenced’ to 20,000 people in London’s Trafalgar Square on 27 July 2024. 

Having previously been removed from Twitter for hate speech in 2018, Robinson was reinstated and has soared to new prominence on Elon Musk’s X, who has even taken to commenting and sharing the controversial activist’s posts to his 200 million followers. The former leader of the English Defence League now has 1 million followers on the platform and in the three months leading up to August 2024, his posts were viewed an estimated 1.2 billion times.

• Using his newfound social media prominence Robinson is once more a figurehead for Britain’s far right.

• Robinson describes Islam as a mental health condition.

• Robinson has called for mass deportations of Muslims and immigrants from European countries.

• Robinson regularly posts veiled hints of the British “spirit to fight”, describes himself doing “battle” with British authorities and posts self-aggrandising AI generated images framing himself as a towering, armoured knight draped in English flags.

  
  

Tommy Robinson is as close to a leadership figure as can be found in Britain’s contemporary far right, serving as a figurehead for a movement that is dispersed both organisationally and geographically. His leadership does not necessarily derive from organisational authority, but by serving as a mouthpiece to a vocal minority of the political right that are adept at mobilising in street protests.

Note: on 24th October 2024, Tommy Robinson was jailed for 18 months and ordered to pay £80,350.82 for contempt of court over his sharing of his banned film.

The next figure can be considered at the other end of the spectrum of Britain’s political right. The right-wing British firebrand and Member of Parliament for Clacton, Nigel Farage was one of the most prominent public figures to have contributed to the spread of misinformation about the attack and subsequent unrest.

For more than 30 years Nigel Farage has occupied a contentious, complicated place within British politics and public discourse. Emerging onto the political scene in the 1990s in the UK Independence Party, his prominence rose dramatically in the build up to and throughout the Brexit referendum of 2016. During that time, he was a mainstay of British political TV and radio. Farage wielded this platform to cultivate the British public’s sense of an overbearing EU bureaucracy and to inflame, in textbook populist fashion, a sharp nativist swing in British politics. 

• Farage has described immigrants from the Middle East as a “Fifth Column” of Islamist terrorism.

• Farage is a self-described admirer of infamous British politician Enoch Powell, who was ostracised for predicting that immigration to the UK would result in “rivers of blood”.

• While championing Brexit, Farage vocally denounced the EU’s immigration policies, at times with a poster that has been compared to propaganda used by the Nazi regime.

  
  

Farage will come to play an important yet narrow role in the dissemination of misinformation after Southport. He represents a source of national political legitimacy and will use that stature to signal support for manipulative narratives about the Southport attack, without explicitly delving into disinformation. With his large base of supporters, Farage serves as a national mouthpiece to constituencies that are predisposed to be receptive to nativist, anti-immigrant rhetoric.

One of the largest single amplifiers of the Southport misinformation narrative will be found to be the controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate. The former kickboxer and self-professed radical misogynist has a long history of extremist rhetoric, towards women, LGBTQ groups and ethnic minorities. 

Tate was banned from major social platforms in 2022 after a campaign to deplatform his views. This effort was based on concerns that his flaunting of wealth and unapologetic masculine rhetoric risked increasing the appeal of extremist ideologies to young men and boys. Tate also has close ties to Tommy Robinson from his UK upbringing. His X profile was restored in 2023 under the auspices of free speech, after the platform was purchased by Elon Musk.

• Tate describes himself as “a woman beating, racist, misogynistic, homophobe… [who doesn’t] like blacks or whites or gays.”

• Tate describes immigration as an invasion, clearly championing the far-right worldview that contains violent conspiracy theories such as the Great Replacement theory.

• As of September 2024, Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate are standing trial in Romania for human trafficking and rape charges.

  
  

Recent algorithmic investigations have revealed that on YouTube Shorts and TikTok, Andrew Tate’s content receives considerable stimulus from platform recommendation algorithms. There are yet to be systematic analyses of the role of X’s recommendation algorithms on his popularity since being restored to the platform, however his following has clearly grown markedly in the X content ecosystem.

Now with 10 million followers on X, Tate has an enormous platform to spread a macho brand that subliminally spreads a violently extremist worldview. The scale of his following naturally means that it encompasses both constituencies that share his views on gender, race and sexuality, and, perhaps more dangerously, millions of those who while not explicitly supportive, are subliminally drawn to his glitzy rebranding of masculinity. 

PART 2: The Chronology of Disinformation on X

Having introduced the series of actors that came to have significant roles in the dissemination of disinformation and misinformation about the Southport attack, this report will now outline chronologically their specific contributions, and how they collectively built a narrative of viral falsehood.  It will identify the different forms of agency needed to build a compelling and ultimately false viral narrative. These include the creation of a novel theory or narrative which taps into popular tropes and resentment. The generation of false legitimacy by the appearance of epistemic authority. The transmission and endorsement of a narrative to a vast audience, perhaps already sympathetic to its subliminal meaning and values. And the exploitation of viral narratives for political or personal gain.

The purpose of this exercise is not simply to record for posterity the online origins of a dramatic episode in British history, but also to offer an important case study in viral disinformation. Ultimately it aims to empower Polis’ readership to understand, spot and mitigate cases of harmful information online.

PART 3: Findings and The Eruption of Violence

This investigation into viral falsehoods surrounding the Southport attack reveals disinformation and misinformation thrived in an information environment where sensationalist content was structurally amplified by algorithms. The findings of this report raise serious concerns about X’s platform design and governance. 

1. Algorithmic Amplification: 

• The false name attributed to the attacker was circulated organically but was directly amplified by X's recommendation algorithms. The name was promoted to users as a as a 'Trending in the UK' topic,  pushing users directly to content that was plainly Islamophobic and contained allusions to, and even explicit calls for violence.

  
  

2. Inadequate Content Moderation: 

• X's Hateful Conduct Policy prohibits "inciting fear or spreading fearful stereotypes about a protected category." However, given much of the content highlighted here remains on X, enforcement appears to have been either entirely absent or inconsistent.

• While X’s recent transparency report reveals a quantitative increase in the removal of posts, this report suggests that X has failed to protect its users from the dangers of viral falsehoods. The restoration of prolific, repeat offenders to the platform, combined with the prevalence of fake accounts, suggest that the scale of falsehoods is either outstripping X’s moderation infrastructure, or it is not being prioritised.

3. Monetisation incentivises sensationalism:

• X’s revenue sharing model has spawned an industry of pages creating and sharing content with the sole objective of achieving virality for monetary gain. This disincentivises thoughtful, fact-based coverage in favour of provocative, sensationalist content narratives. @EuropeInvasionn, @EndWokeness and @Channel3nownews are prime examples of this trend, which is likely to accelerate given changes to X’s monetisation scheme that ties financial rewards directly to engagement with X’s ‘premium’ user base.

• The Centre for Countering Digital Hate found X ran prominent advertising around many of the viral falsehoods surrounding Southport. For example, @LozzaFox, posted boastfully that throughout the Southport saga, he received considerable financial remuneration for his posts on the platform.

  
  

However, it was only with the intersection of mobilisation from organised extremists and underlying societal tensions that these digital dynamics metastasised into real life unrest. This also warrants an assessment of how disinformation can tap into societal dissatisfaction and be weaponised by extreme actors.

Social media analyses at the time reveal a disparate, loosely coordinated effort to mobilise protesters and incite violence. Amidst the false xenophobic narratives about Southport, we can trace deliberate efforts across numerous platforms to mobilise demonstrations, often with explicit invitations to criminality and violence.

In an opaque Telegram channel established to organise the 30 July demonstration, a user known as 'Stimpy', has been identified as one of the earliest figures mobilising for the St Lukes Road protest. ‘Stimpy’ used that Southport channel to post Nazi materials, including a masked man standing in front of a swastika flag. A subsequent analysis by ISD revealed sharp spikes in Telegram usage in regions of the UK leading up to riots in those respective regions. This signals both the opportunism of more extreme ideologues and the undeniable mobilising capacity of these loose online networks. 

On X, one 30 July post has been identified as mobilising for the St Lukes Road protest and hinting at coming violence. The posts read “children are being slaughtered at the altar of uncontrolled mass migration. Open Borders advocates have blood on their hands.” The image is titled ‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’, which is the catchphrase for Patriotic Alternative, followed by a bloody handprint and details for the protest. TikTok also saw a surge of videos encouraging users to mobilise, often featuring far-right imagery, and encouraging attendees to conceal their identities, in a clear allusion to coming criminality and violence.

By 20:05 on Tuesday 30 July, crowds had gathered outside the Southport Mosque, chanting nationalist and Islamophobic slogans such as ‘English ‘till I die’, ‘Tommy Robinson’ and ‘Allah, Allah, who the *** is Allah’. By 21:00 the crowd was hurling projectiles at police and vandalising the mosque and nearby businesses. Fifty-three police officers were injured in the line of duty on that Tuesday alone.

Over the following week, the exhibition of unrest and violence in Southport inspired wider demonstrations throughout the United Kingdom. Nearly 30, racially motivated, "anti-immigration demonstrations " erupted in 27 towns and cities. In Sunderland, a citizen’s advice bureau was set on fire, in Rotherham, rioters set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers. Internationally, several countries, including Australia, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia, issued travel alerts for the UK. As of September 2024, Police have arrested 1,280 individuals, with more than 800 charged, primarily with violent disorder. Notably, the youngest person charged was just 12 years old. In accordance with legal norms, they have not been named by police. 

The involvement of known far-right figures and organisations was evident throughout the week of unrest. Britain First and its leader Paul Golding vocally expressed their support for the demonstrations online. Public affiliates of Tommy Robinson, such as Rikki Doolan, were present at the riot in Southport and also organised their own demonstration in central London on 31 July. That demonstration also deteriorated into violence. Meanwhile members of Patriotic Alternative, one of Britain’s few active fascist organisations, were identified as participating in the riots: David Miles, one publicly renowned member, posted himself at the scene in Southport. Besides ardent political actors, the riots were also supplemented by local groups of football hooligans and wider groups driven to wanton violence by societal dissatisfaction and deprivation. 

The disparate, largely atomised nature of this mobilisation illustrates what researchers of Britain’s far right have described as a ‘post-organisational’ phenomenon. This is where the traditional institutional bastions of the radical and extreme right, such as the English Defence League or Britain First, have either formally disbanded or seen their monopoly of influence wane considerably. Instead, experts today paint a picture of a highly dispersed and subcultural far right, perhaps unified only in their shared participation in a right-wing media ecosystem, that has been briefly surveyed in this report. Joe Mulhall of anti-fascist organisation HopeNotHate has pointed to figures such as Tommy Robinson or Laurence Fox as ‘weathermakers’. These are informal figureheads who can channel resentment and implicitly encourage violence among supporters. Such mobilisation is often dispersed geographically but concentrates on occasions of national significance, such as in Southport, in the wake of this shocking attack.

The Southport episode vividly illustrates the dangerous intersection of disinformation, organised extremism and societal tensions. It is a testimony to the potency of that interplay that it was a mere thirty hours from the initial false narratives to the hospitalisation of dozens of police officers.

This report has catalogued the agency of influential social media figures in spreading the fake Southport narratives. It has traced their chronology and development, before identifying the role of extremists and organisers in stoking real violence. This report will now conclude by offering readers with tools to critically evaluate online information, recognise manipulation tactics, and understand the broader socio-political context of viral content. To this end, Polis invites our readers to join in working to build more resilient societies, better equipped to withstand the divisive forces of political extremism.

PART 4: MEDIA LITERACY TO COMBAT MIS AND DISINFORMATION

The speed with which false speculation surrounding the Southport attacker morphed into a viral campaign of hatred is a clear testimony to the ways in which societal sentiment and prejudice can be weaponised by cynical actors and amplified by social media algorithms. Especially in sensitive cases such as extreme violence and political controversy, it is imperative that all readers approach online discourse with a grounded understanding of the effectiveness of misinformation at manipulating users and broader discourses. 

A series of recent surveys suggest that individuals overestimate their ability to identify false or misleading content at a time where mis/disinformation’s influence is becoming increasingly potent. Whilst the effectiveness of fake news can be attributed to several psychological and societal factors – including historic low trust in institutions and the ‘illusory truth effect’ – initial research has shown media literacy tips to be a successful method to mitigate these dangers. 

• EVALUATING METHODS: 

• The University of Chicago recommends several methods to “quickly and efficiently” critically analyse information from differing websites and sources:

  
  

• SIFT METHOD: https://clark.libguides.com/evaluating-information/SIFT

• Created by Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the SIFT method asks readers to Stop; Investigate the Source; Find Better Coverage; and Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to their Original Context. 

  
  

• CRAAP METHOD: https://guides.lib.uchicago.edu/ld.php?content_id=77584250

• Designed by Sarah Blakeslee, Librarian at California State University, the CRAAP advises readers to consider Currency; Relevance; Authority; Accuracy; and Purpose. 

  
  

• SMART CHECK: https://hnresearch.lonestar.edu/c.php?g=1002813&p=7262202

• SMART (Source; Motive; Authority; Review; Two-Source Test) is described by the University of Chicago as being “particularly helpful when evaluating news stories”.

  
  

• ACCOMPANYING TOOLS:

• In order to successfully apply either SIFT, CRAAP, OR SMART, Polis Analysis recommends these tools to help readers navigate the digital world:

  
  

• BAD NEWS GAME: https://www.getbadnews.com/en#intro

• “Bad News works as a psychological “vaccine” against disinformation: playing it builds cognitive resistance against common forms of manipulation that you may encounter online.”

  
  

• FAKEY: https://fakey.osome.iu.edu/

• "This game aims to teach media literacy and study how people interact with misinformation.” 

• POLITITRUTH: https://www.cinqmarsmedia.com/politifact/index.html

• “PolitiTruth is a fake news quiz game that challenges players to distinguish political fact from fiction.”

• BOT SENTINEL: https://botsentinel.com/

• Bot Sentinel “publicly display[s] detailed information about Twitter accounts the platform is tracking to give visitors of this website a better understanding of how nefarious accounts spread disinformation and target other accounts.” 

  
  

• ALLSIDES: https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news

• AllSides “provide[s] Media Bias Ratings for over 1,400 media outlets and writers, so you can easily identify different perspectives,” including AI-powered bias checker,

  
  

• GROUND NEWS: https://ground.news/media-bias

• Ground News collects daily news stories from over 50,000 sources, “deliver[ing] them with a colour-coded bias rating.” 

  
  

• POLITIFACT: https://www.politifact.com/

• “Each day, PolitiFact journalists look for statements to fact-check. We read transcripts, speeches, news stories, press releases, and campaign brochures. We watch TV and scan social media.”

  
  

• FULL FACT: https://fullfact.org/

• Full Fact “fact checks claims in public debate which are of public interest. This includes—but is not limited to—claims made by politicians and the media.”

  
  

• NEWSGUARD: https://www.newsguardtech.com/

• “NewsGuard deploys a team of expert journalists to rate and review the reliability of news sources across the open web, social media, and content platforms based on a set of apolitical criteria of journalistic practice.”

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