Southport riots: ‘Chain of people’ behind misinformation spread online, expert says

By Michael Baggs (with Emily Maitlis & Jon Sopel)

Southport violence has been blamed, in part, on disinformation shared online. But was it a coordinated plan?

In brief...

• Disinformation about the Southport stabbing may have been a coordinated campaign aimed at creating division in the UK, expert believes.
• Expert Marc Owen Jones highlighted the role of online personalities and fake news websites in spreading false narratives.
• The disinformation spread led to violent riots in Southport, with attacks on a mosque, police vans set on fire, and local properties damaged, resulting in injuries to 53 police officers.

Disinformation shared online about the Southport stabbing killer has the hallmarks of a coordinated campaign to create division in the UK, a disinformation expert tells The News Agents.

Marc Owen Jones describes false details of the 17-year-old who stabbed children at a Taylor Swift dance class on 29 July as "sinister", and potentially "the same people" who have incited incidents in other parts of the world.

He shared details on X/Twitter of how disinformation spread, and who by, ahead of the riots which saw bricks hurled at a mosque, a police van burned and local homes damaged.

Jones tells Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel that disinformation is shared “deliberately for either power or money”, especially around tragedies such as the Southport killings.

What happened in Southport?

On Monday 29 August, a 17-year-old attacked a summer dance class and stabbed 11 young girls and two adults. Three of the children have died as a result of their injuries, with others remaining in a critical condition.

A fake name, and incorrect details of the killer's heritage, were shared online after the incident.

Under UK law, criminals under the age of 18 cannot be named unless permission is given by a judge for the media to do so.

The riot that followed left 53 police officers injured and properties damaged.

Jones tells The News Agents that people involved in amplifying these claims do it for attention and "clicks".

“They will jump on any event like this, particularly if it's an event that they can use to target a particular minority group," he says.

“Doesn't matter where it is, whether it's in the US, whether it's in Australia, whether it's in Southport, it's a global attempt to try and demonise minorities.”

And we’ve seen this before.

In April 2024, a Jewish man – Benjamin Cohen – was falsely named online as the man behind a knife attack in Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre, Sydney, Australia.

Seven people died in the attack, including the man responsible for the knife attack – a 40 year old Australian man.

But why does it happen?

"The objective is to create division to weaken a society to promote internal conflict, because a divided society is much weaker than the united one," he says.

In the thread Jones shared on X, he named online personalities such as Andrew Tate and Darren Grimes ("disinfluencers", in his words), while others involved were "fake" news websites.

He says the Southport disinformation campaign has all the hallmarks of a targeted attack on UK society.

"When you see organised disinformation like this, there's a chain of people behind it," he says, naming Russia, Israel and Iran as countries that have actively manufactured online disinformation to sew seeds of hate.

"It's not in the realm of conspiracy to say that governments do this," he adds. "It could be a PR company, but that PR company is usually contracted by a client."

"There are companies that work for governments to try and generate hate. It's not always governments, it can be private actors who have particular interests in generating specific narratives and conversations."

He also names Brexit as a key example of a situation which he believes had conversations manipulated online, saying the UK leaving the EU was a "benefit" to overseas adversaries.

Social media companies, he says, are not doing enough to combat these co-ordinated schemes, which they ultimately profit from, naming the Elon Musk-owned X/Twitter as a prime example of, where "verified" users can pay money to have what they share boosted in the platform's algorithm.

His advice to people on social media, especially X, is simple: "Don't retweet".

"This is the question we don't ask enough – why do we share things? We don't really get a benefit. So you know, if in doubt, don't share and don't retweet."

What's been said since the riots?

There have been calls for charges to be brought against people who were involved in sharing disinformation online, which is believed to have sparked the Tuesday violence.

Labour's Jess Phillips has blamed "blatant dangerous misinformation" for the scenes in Southport.

Keir Starmer said those involved in the riots will face the "full force" of the law.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described the violence as "completely appalling".

A statement for the Liverpool Region Mosque Network accuses a minority of people for trying to portray the "inhumane" attack as "somehow related to the Muslim community."

"Frankly it is not, and we must not let those who seek to divide us and spread hate use this as an opportunity," it adds.

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