![]() So how likely is it that British public opinion about Brexit was manipulated? Very likely, say researchers at Swansea University, who collaborated on a study with the University of California, Berkeley. “The only people concerned are those that still can’t come to terms with the fact that they lost the referendum so they will come up with more and more ludicrous excuses,” Banks said, according to Reuters. “Researchers have not been given access to equivalent information by Facebook.”īanks dismisses allegations of wrongdoing as ludicrous. In one tweet, for example, posted a photo of a Muslim woman looking at her phone as she crossed London’s Westminster Bridge in the wake of the March terror attack. Instead of showing her horror at the incident, the picture of her was taken out of context, with the message: “Muslim woman pays no mind to the terror attack, casually walks by a dying man while checking phone #PrayForLondon #Westminster #BanIslam.”Īlthough all the evidence gathered so far is not conclusive, “dismissal of the Russian connection would be premature”, The Economist says. tweeted twice a day before 4 January 2016, but then fired off an average of 1,400 tweets a day up to 21 May - identified as Russian by Twitter during US inquiries - used anti-Muslim rhetoric to try to convince voters that leaving the EU was the only way to remain safe, according to Wired. (The Twitter account is no longer (also no longer active) was notable for the account’s prolific output. In the four days before the referendum, posted or retweeted at least 97 messages with the hashtag #Brexit, often repeating conspiracy theories, The Times reports. Three Twitter accounts, in particular, illustrate the type of messages that have been flagged to the claimed to live in the Russian town of Gelendzhik, on the Black Sea, signed up for Twitter in May 2016, one month before the Brexit vote. Hundreds of the same Twitter accounts also tweeted about #Brexit. ![]() ![]() The evidence so far indicates only a small-scale effort by Russia to interfere in Brexit, “but new information is being dug out of online archives week by week”, says The Economist.īritons started asking questions after Twitter told a US congressional inquiry that more than 2,700 Russian accounts run by the Internet Research Agency - a so-called troll farm linked to the Kremlin - posted tweets about American politics. What still lies buried.” What lies beneath “It’s what lies beneath that should concern us. “The surface has been scratched,” says The Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr. The Electoral Commission is demanding to know more. The elections watchdog wants to know whether Vote Leave skirted the £7m campaign limit by funnelling an extra £625,000 to a fashion student for a social media campaign, along with a further £100,000 to pro-Brexit group Veterans for Britain. Vote Leave spent 98% of its budget on online adverts - including a burst of Facebook ads days before the Brexit vote. What once sounded like the plot of a sci-fi thriller moved into the realm of possibility last week when the Electoral Commission announced an investigation into how much was spent by the “Vote Leave” pro-Brexit campaign, led by Tory grandees Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. Vote Leave argues that Britons were simply fed up with a decade of economic uncertainty and social inequality, allowing a small majority of Brexiteers to swing the vote, with a narrow 52%-48% victory - a difference of 1.3 million votes. There are growing fears, however, that the Kremlin may have interfered in the Brexit campaign and UK politics generally - and even in the health service, by spreading rumours about flu and measles jabs to further destabilise Britain. The PM stopped short of blaming Russia for the Brexit referendum result, but what if Britain’s decision to leave the European Union really was manipulated by the Kremlin? “We know what you are doing and you will not succeed,” Prime Minister Theresa May told Vladimir Putin in mid-November, warning the Russian leader not to “weaponise information” through fake news, hacking and electoral interference.
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