Extremist groups exploit pandemic, study reveals

An investigation by the BBC Click television program and the United Kingdom counter-extremism think tank the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, or ISD, shows how extremist political and fringe medical communities have tried to exploit the novel coronavirus pandemic online with misinformation campaigns.

Investigators found that while false claims about novel coronavirus have been "hard to miss", the interests and ideologies underneath them have been far less visible.

Leader of the Digital Research Unit at the ISD, Chloe Colliver, said the study set out to look at the intersection of extremism and disinformation online.

Researchers collected about 150,000 public Facebook posts sent by 38 far-right groups and pages since January. They used keywords to spot the key themes of each post, and then algorithms to map what each group tended to speak about overall.

The study identified five communities, united by the topic of discussion: immigration, Islam, Judaism, LGBT(or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) and elites.

Writing in BBC News, social media expert and member of the study team Carl Miller said the numbers show that for the first four of these, the scale of activity hadn't increased in volume since the lockdown.

But while there were not more posts about immigration, for example, Miller said discussions about the topic had increasingly linked it to COVID-19.

Miller said it is the same for the theme of Islam: "The scale was constant, but more and more of the discussion had begun to explicitly link the virus to Muslims, claiming they were exempt from the lockdown, blaming them for its spread, and even hoping they would catch it.

"But the fifth and largest community-the one concerning the 'elites'-had shown a significant spike in activity during the lockdown.

"Discussions included the relationship of these 'elites'-like Jeff Bezos, the Rothschilds, George Soros and Bill Gates-to the 'deep state', and their alleged role in causing the pandemic."

The researchers discovered that along with tying it to "elites", this community was more likely than any other to think the virus was "engineered, over-hyped, or had an existing cure".

Colliver said: "Anti-elite conversations have escalated dramatically, especially driving home the idea the lockdown is a tool of social control."

As they dug deeper into the posts, the researchers took note of many thousands of links directing users to fringe political and health websites.

Writing about the study in a Twitter post, Miller added: "A well funded parallel world has been built online, dedicated to throwing off the 'yoke' of conventional science and medicine they believe is hopelessly compromised."

What the WHO has called an "infodemic" looks more like "a parallel world, complete with social organization, activism and gift shops", Miller said.

He added: "Given its size and energy, it is a world that also may represent a growing threat to the lockdown itself, and the medical and political consensus on which it is grounded."