A report published by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD) shows an analysis of how misinformation and conspiracies have infiltrated Irish social media accounts across multiple platforms, due to being spread by far-right accounts. Violent and threatening rhetoric is often used against marginalized groups while these accounts spread misinformation.
On November 20th, a report called Uisce Faoi Thalamh (an Irish idiom for “conspiracy”) was published by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think-tank that is dedicated to investigating hate, extremism, and disinformation.
According to ISD, the point of this research was to understand, in an Irish context, how belief in conspiracy theories and the spreading of misinformation and disinformation brings specific communities together, and radicalizes some into extreme belief systems.
In Ireland, more than 13 million posts from 1,640 accounts were analyzed across 12 platforms from January 2020 to April 2023 as part of the study. The research found that false information and conspiracy theories being spread online can lead to direct, real-life actions, which can include acts of violence.
The study also shows that tech companies are failing to enforce European Union guidelines to curb the spread of false, misleading and harmful content on these social media platforms. Researchers found that X, formerly known as Twitter, was the platform where the most activity of misinformation and disinformation occurred. Telegram also continues to grow as a platform where a lot of misleading information is shared.
The analysis showed that certain accounts that spread misinformation are struggling to break through to people on TikTok — they either fail to create followings, or, in most cases, get their account suspended. Some of their videos still manage to receive more than a million views.
The rise of conspiracies and misinformation began in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccinations, but has continued through focus on topics such as anti-immigration, the war in Ukraine, anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, climate change denial, and hateful ideologies. Politicians in Ireland were regularly targeted by misinformation as well.
The study found that “hateful ideologies spread with ease, with support for white nationalism, antisemitism and Islamophobia observed on platforms like Telegram and Instagram, while Holocaust denial and the promotion of Nazi material by Irish actors were constant on alternative platforms like Gettr and Gab.” Gettr and Gab are both alt-tech American social media platforms known for their conservative and far-right user bases.
Within Ireland itself, there is a popularity of Irish alternative media in groups that spread misinformation. The report found that Gript.ie, an Irish conservative alternative media site, had a lot of shares within fringe groups (a group that is defined politically as an organization or ideology that is considered to be on the outside of mainstream ideas). The report noticed more than 78,000 shares of Gript articles – often on topics such as health, immigration, and LGBTQ+ issues.
In March 2023, Ireland’s national LGBT organization mentioned statistics that were released by An Garda Síochána, the national police and security of Ireland, that hate crimes against LGBTQI+ individuals increased by 30% over 12 months.
For the second year in a row, LGBTQI+ people were the second most targeted group of people, following people victims of racist messages, in Ireland. Pádraig Rice, Policy and Research Manager with LGBT Ireland said, “The social media platforms also have questions to answer. It’s becoming increasingly clear that online hate and abuse is spilling over into real life. Facebook and Twitter, in particular, need to step up and stop allowing their sites to be used by people who abuse others.”
The data-led analysis shows how misinformation has exploded on social media, particularly since 2020. Communities and discussion forums that discussed conspiracies about the COVID-19 pandemic have now become spaces for hate related to immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community. According to the findings, the conversations and keywords about health overlapped the most with Irish politics (6.4%), followed by conspiracy (2.9%) and immigration (1.9%).
ISD recommends that platforms do better at enforcing their own guidelines and moderating content that is posted, in order to combat the spread of harmful content on these platforms. It is also recommended to look at why and which algorithms allow this content to spread.
One of the authors of the report, Aoife Gallagher said that it is hard to know how widespread these ideologies are but the impact that they are having is still very serious, as people from these groups don’t need to have major political power in order to harm people.
