Exposed: The Russian trolls exploiting UK immigration concerns to stoke rioting
Russian accounts have been blamed for "manipulating" online discourse
Reuters/PA
Russian state-backed activists have been blamed for whipping up "anti-migrant rhetoric" behind the violent disorder which has rocked the UK over the last week.
In the wake of the Southport stabbings which left three children dead last Monday, high-profile foreign social media accounts and UK-based "far-right activists" converged online in what has been labelled a case of "strategic... covert organising".
Channels on Telegram - a widely-used messaging app popular in Russia - have been accused of capitalising on existing immigration concerns in the UK.
Messages like "from Russia with love" or "we support you" have been circulating in Russian-language British news "chats" as unrest flared up.
Online activists were blamed for stoking the riots which unfolded in places like Middlesborough
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Joe Ondrak, a senior researcher for the anti-disinformation group Logically said channels like Telegram had managed to "thread the language of conspiracy theories around anti-migrant rhetoric".
While elsewhere, "misinformation" channels spread falsehoods about the identity of the suspected Southport attacker as crowd trouble flared up in Merseyside on July 30.
The PM's spokesperson joined in with blaming organised internet groups.
He said: "Clearly we have seen bot activity online, much of which may well be amplified with the involvement of state actors amplifying some of the disinformation and misinformation that we've seen.
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Foreign-backed social media accounts had urged Britons to target immigration-linked locations across the country
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"And that is something that the National Crime Agency and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology are looking at in relation to what we’ve seen online.
The official declined to say which states may be involved, but added that it "is clearly something that is being looked at".
So-called "British patriots" on part-Chinese state-owned social media platform TikTok had pushed for Britons to descend on immigration solicitors across the country - as well as engage in violent protests in places like Middlesborough and Tamworth.
While billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, formerly Twitter, made a number of comments on his platform indicating that Britain was heading for a "civil war".
The online tensions even provoked the Prime Minister to speak out
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The online tensions even provoked the Prime Minister to speak out - in an address to the country in the wake of several days of rioting, Sir Keir Starmer vowed that "criminal law applies online as well as offline" as he laid the blame for the unrest with social media firms like Musk's.
And the PM's spokesperson had added that there was "no justification" for the X owner's comments, saying there was more that social media companies "can and should be doing".
Zoe Manzi, an analyst at human rights think tank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue issued a dire warning about "organised" online campaigns.
Manzi said the "far-right" were "being strategic about the particular platforms they use" through "a combination of covert organising and a broadcast to a committed audience".
On some social media sites, the #FarRightThugsUnite hashtag had emerged in the wake of Starmer's comments about violence in Southport - and British authorities suspect that potentially foreign-backed accounts were headlining a coordinated effort to amplify the sentiment.