The whirlwind of conspiracy theories that engulfed Catherine, Princess of Wales before she revealed her cancer diagnosis last week probably didn’t need foreign help. But British researchers said Wednesday that a notorious Russian disinformation operation helped confuse matters.
Martin Innes, an authority on digital disinformation at Cardiff University in Wales, said he and his colleagues traced 45 social media accounts that posted false claims about Catherine to a Kremlin-linked disinformation network that had previously spread divisive stories about the topic. President of Ukraine Volodymyr. Zelensky, in addition to about France’s support for Ukraine.
As Professor Innes said, the influence campaign appeared designed to inflame divisions, deepen the sense of chaos in society and undermine trust in institutions – on this case the British royal family and the news media.
“It creates an emotional response,” he said. “This story has already been framed in conspiracy terms, so you can appeal to these people. And people who support the royal family are furious.”
The motive, in his opinion, was probably industrial and political. Social media traffic about Catherine has skyrocketed over the past three months because the ignorance about her condition created a void that the web army full of rumors and speculation. In the case of the Russian network, amplifying these posts through accounts would allow them to extend their very own traffic statistics and follower numbers.
It is unclear who can have hired the disinformation network to pursue Catherine, but it surely has experience in campaigns geared toward weakening the position of nations and other people at odds with the Kremlin. Britain’s strong support for Ukraine and London’s long-standing antagonism with Moscow will make it a tempting goal for the Russians.
The Daily Telegraph, a London newspaper, reported on Sunday, British officials feared that Russia, China and Iran were stoking disinformation about Catherine in an try to destabilize the country.
Asked about the reports in Parliament on Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden didn’t name the countries but said it was “a reminder to all of us that it is important that we deal with valid and reliable information, and are appropriately skeptical of many online sources.
In 2020, a British parliamentary committee found that Russia had carried out a sustained, sophisticated campaign to undermine British democracy, using tactics ranging from disinformation and election interference to sending dirty money and employing members of the House of Lords. The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed these conclusions as “Russophobia.”
Kensington Palace, where Catherine and her husband, Prince William, have their offices, declined to comment on Russia’s role in the recent rumor-mongering. The palace appealed to the media and the public to give Catherine privacy after she announced she had cancer in a video last Friday.
Professor Innes, who runs a research program investigating the causes and consequences of digital misinformation, he said his team noticed a mysterious spike in a certain type of social media posts on March 19, the day after a video surfaced of Catherine and William leaving a grocery store near their Windsor home.
One widely repeated post on X included a photo from the film in which Catherine’s face was visibly altered. It was asked: “Why do these big media channels want us to believe it’s Kate and William? But as we see, they are not Kate or William. …”
By tracking the 45 accounts that re-posted the post, Professor Innes said researchers found they all came from one main account called Master Firs. It had hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation, known in the industry as Doublehe said.
Since 2017, Doppelgänger has been linked to the creation of fake websites impersonating real news organizations in Europe and the United States. Last week, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced sanctions against two Russians and their companies for their involvement in cyber influence operations. They are believed to be part of the Doppelgänger network.
Catherine is not the only member of the royal family to become the subject of online fury in Russia. On the same day as many posts about the film appeared, erroneous news about the death of King Charles III began circulating on the popular Russian social media site Telegram.
The reports were later picked up by Russian media, forcing the British embassies in Moscow and Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, to deny them as “fake news”. Like Catherine, Charles, 75, is being treated for cancer, although he still greets visitors in private and plans to attend services at Easter.
In addition to Russia’s involvement, rumors and gossip about Catherine’s health have appeared in many corners of the web, including on accounts sympathetic to William’s brother, Prince Harry, and his wife, Meghan. With internet craze so widespread, the influence of any state actor can be muted.
“It’s very difficult to isolate just one element,” Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of EU DisinfoLab, a research organization in Brussels that played a role in identifying a Russian disinformation group in 2022 and named it Doppelgänger. “The question is what is spread by the media, online influencers or inauthentic sources. Everything is interconnected.”
He said such campaigns are also particularly difficult to measure because social media companies such as X and Meta have restricted access to data that would allow researchers, journalists and civil society groups to gain more detailed insight into the dissemination of material on their platforms.
Alaphilippe said some disinformation-for-hire agencies are not very picky about what material they spread online. “On Monday you may see bots promoting the Russian narrative,” he said. “They can play online on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they can run crypto-scam campaigns.”
Although awareness of Russian disinformation campaigns has increased since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, online fraud and lies have not decreased.
Through bots, online trolls and disinformation peddlers, Russia-linked groups track news events, sowing confusion and discord. Ukraine has been the focus of their efforts over the past two years as President Vladimir Putin sought to undermine the West’s resolve to continue supporting the war.
A French government minister recently accused Russia of this artificially amplifying concerns over last yr’s bedbug scare in Paris. Another false claim by the media monitoring groups said reinforced by Russia, the European Union allowed it powdered insects so as to add to food.
Spreading rumors about Catherine is a more traditional influence operation, but the Russians are refining their tactics as governments and independent researchers become more sophisticated at detecting their activities.
Fake news sites have emerged in the United States and Europe spread Russian propaganda and potentially influence the 2024 elections. In videos on YouTube and TikTok, people posed as Ukrainian doctors and film producers to tell false stories favorable to Russia’s interests.
“Whether they spread it for profit or for political purposes, these types of actors tend to pounce on anything that is engaging and controversial,” said Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for Journalism Studies at the University of Oxford. “So do some news media,” he added, although their motives may vary.
“When politically motivated,” Professor Nielsen said, “it is rarely about persuasion as much as it is about trying to undermine people’s trust in the media environment.”
