UK far-right riots: violence triggered by misinformation on social media
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00:00We can now bring in Elizabeth Poole, Professor of Media and Communications at Keele University.
00:05Good afternoon. Thank you very much for joining us on the programme today. It seems that this
00:10unrest in the UK has gotten out of control because of the lack of policing on social media
00:14where disinformation seems to spread so quickly. How dangerous is this in your opinion?
00:22Well, it's a complex issue. So obviously these things are not caused by social media,
00:28but sometimes social media facilitates and when these things go viral they get more momentum
00:35and therefore more people join in and this creates a kind of snowballing effect. So yeah,
00:43so we should understand that these issues are societal problems, but they become more viral.
00:50Social media is a facilitator of those kind of like expressions of hate and polarisation
00:59in society. And is this anti-immigrant rhetoric we're seeing online focused towards the Muslim
01:06community in particular? Yeah, I mean there's a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric in general,
01:13but the Muslim community has been singled out as in particular for far-right groups
01:20as being a kind of like cultural threat to the UK. So that has been an ongoing
01:27theme of their kind of narratives for quite some time now.
01:31I know the new government has been in power just for a couple of weeks, so not enough time,
01:35but clearly there seems to be a problem of Islamophobia. So how do you go about addressing
01:40this? Well, I think one of the problems is that not many people mention Islamophobia. It's quite
01:48taboo really. So that's one of the issues is that a lot of people have talked about far-right
01:55thuggery and anti-immigration rhetoric, but not really about Islamophobia. So that's the first
02:02thing that needs to be done really is to think, you know, this is a problem and it needs to be
02:07dealt with. So recognising that and speaking its name is important. And what about the rhetoric
02:14which we have witnessed over the past few years from political figures in the United Kingdom like
02:19Nigel Farage, like Suella Breverman, who used to talk about an invasion of migrants coming in.
02:28That in itself is dangerous, isn't it? And has sort of fanned the flames of what we're seeing today.
02:35Yeah, so this is where it starts, isn't it? It's politicians, it's senior figures
02:40that spread this rhetoric. It's also the British right-wing press. You know, we've had years and
02:47years of anti-Islam, anti-immigration narratives, themes, issues coming up in the press and all this
02:54is circulated and it kind of makes it normalised. So, you know, it's what Sayyida Varsi, Baroness
03:02Sayyida Varsi called the dinner party test, where she said that it's become so normalised that
03:08people would be willing to talk about Muslims in such a way over a dinner party and not feel
03:14ashamed like they would other minority groups. So, yeah, it's kind of been normalised.
03:19And what about the role of Elon Musk in all of this? Because, of course, a lot of this
03:25information is spread on ex-formerly Twitter, which he himself owns, and these riots are
03:31something he's been actively talking about on his social media platform.
03:37Yeah, so obviously this contributes to kind of stoking and keeping the narrative going,
03:43I suppose. And really, that's kind of like the business model, isn't it, of some of these
03:47companies that, you know, commercially, this kind of inflammatory sensationalist material keeps them
03:53going. It's their oxygen. So, for him to be involved himself is financially productive for
04:02him. But, yeah, a lot of the research we've done has shown that before he acquired the platform,
04:08that actually the moderation standards were quite strict and there had been quite a clampdown on
04:13this kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric. And there was a lot of supportive counter-narratives against it
04:20on Twitter. But more recently, because of the opening up of the platform and the reduction of
04:28moderation standards, research has shown that there's been a rise of hate speech on that
04:34platform again. Because there is this downside with social media platforms like X, but it can
04:41also be used for good in terms of getting the Muslim community in the UK to band together.
04:49Yeah, so the research that we've done shows that the significant solidarity and activists use X
04:56and other social media platforms to show allyship, really, with communities that are
05:02marginalised. But also, these platforms give those communities a voice where, perhaps in the past,
05:08they might not have had that voice in mainstream media. So, the research that we've shown
05:14shows significant Muslim voices on X and other platforms that then get significant
05:23solidarity from allies across the world. And that creates these kind of counter-narratives and
05:29counter-publics that contest this kind of negative discourse, which we're seeing now,
05:34actually. And you can see there's this kind of countering by these anti-racist groups
05:40that's playing out now. So, hopefully, that will seize the momentum and things will
05:46take a different turn. Elizabeth, you're a professor of media and communications. I want to know,
05:50how are newspapers in the country covering these riots?
05:59That's a good question, actually. Well, I've been following some of the right-wing press
06:08representation. And again, you do see this kind of like double standards narrative, where
06:16there's this idea that the police are policing far-right groups much more than
06:24kind of like Muslim groups and anti-racist groups that have come out to kind of protect
06:29mosques. So, there's this kind of idea, which has also been circulated on social media, of this
06:34two-tier kilia, that there's two-tier policing. And also, there's a lot more focus on the
06:41problems of the Muslim Defence League and framing Muslims as kind of like thugs,
06:49rather than the far-right. Elizabeth, we're going to have to leave it there.
06:53Thank you so much for joining us on the programme today. Thank you.