The 1996 Dunblane massacre and the outcry that followed are regarded in the United States as… A textbook example How a terrorist act mobilized a country to demand effective gun regulation.
The atrocity, which killed 16 children and their teacher, sparked a wave of national revulsion that, within weeks, led to 750,000 people signing a petition demanding a change in the law. Within a year and a half, new legislation had banned the possession of firearms.
Nearly 30 years later, the horrific violence committed against a dance class in Southport has provoked a very different reaction. One that shocked many in Britain this week, but which experts on domestic extremism (and especially those who analyse the intersection of violence and technology) say is all too sadly familiar. And in this new age of algorithmic outrage, depressingly inevitable.
“There has always been radicalization, but in the past, leaders were the bridge that brought people together,” said Maria Ressa, a Filipino journalist and scathing critic of technology who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. “That’s impossible to do now, because what used to radicalize extremists and terrorists now radicalizes the public. Because the information ecosystem is designed that way.”
For Ressa, everything about the violence that erupted on the streets of Southport and then in cities across the country, fueled by wild rumors on social media and anti-immigrant rhetoric, was deeply familiar. “There’s always been propaganda and there’s always been violence. What has made violence mainstream is social media. (The attack on the U.S. Capitol) on January 6 is the perfect example: People wouldn’t have been able to find each other if social media hadn’t grouped them together and isolated them to further incite them.”
The biggest difference between the Dunblane massacre in 1996 and today is a radical transformation in the way we communicate. In our instant information environment, based on algorithms that make the most shocking, outrageous or emotional comments go viral, social media is designed to do exactly the opposite of generating unity: it is an engine of polarization.
“It seems like it was only a matter of time before we saw something like this in the UK,” said Julia Ebner, director of the Violent Extremism Lab at the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion at the University of Oxford. “This alternative information ecosystem is fueling these narratives. We saw it in Germany in the Chemnitz riots of 2018, which this reminded me very much of. And we saw it in the US with the January 6 insurrection.”
“You can see this chain reaction on alternative news channels, where disinformation can spread so quickly and mobilize people to take to the streets, who are then prone to use violence because there is this anger and these very deep emotions that of course get amplified. And then from these alternative media, it gets transmitted to X or to the mainstream social media platforms.”
This “alternative information ecosystem” – which includes Telegram, Bitchute, Parler and Gab – often flows invisibly beneath the mainstream media or even the social media landscape. It has proven to be a breeding ground for far-right, conspiracy and extremist ideologies that collided this week and mobilised people into the streets.
“Politicians need to stop talking about ‘the real world’ instead of ‘the online world,’” Ressa said. “How many times do we have to say it? It’s the same thing.”
For Jacob Davey, director of countering hate policy and research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London, it was “a perfect storm”, with a rising far right in the UK emboldened by recent mass demonstrations and far-right figures such as Tommy Robinson “replatforming” on X as measures to keep hate in check are rolled back.
The problem is that while academics, researchers and policy makers increasingly understand the problem, almost nothing has been done to address it.
“And every year that this is not fixed, that real laws against social media are not put in place, it gets significantly worse,” Ressa says. “And I will remind you what[Soviet leader]Yuri Andropov said. He said: disinformatics “(Misinformation) is like cocaine. You take it once or twice and nothing happens, but if you take it all the time, you become addicted. You become a different person.”
However, although UK authorities theoretically understand these threats, in 2021, MI5 chief Ken McCallumdescribed far-right extremism as the biggest domestic terrorist threat facing Britain – fundamental technological problems have not been addressed.
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Seven years after the FBI and US Congress launched investigations into the weaponisation of social media by the Russian state – investigations that were ignored or ridiculed by large sections of the right-wing British media – Daily Mail This week, a shocking headline appeared about a single suspicious account on X, with hints that it might be based in Russia, spreading disinformation, although this was likely only a very small part of the picture.
And there is still no recognition that what we are witnessing is part of a global phenomenon: the rise of populism and authoritarianism, underpinned by profound structural changes in communication. Nor is it fully understood, according to Ebner, how profound the similarities are with what is happening in other countries.
“The situation is very similar all over the world and in different countries when it comes to the rise of far-right politics. No other movement has been able to amplify its ideologies in the same way. The far-right is simply tapping into those really powerful emotions, in terms of algorithmically powerful emotions: anger, outrage, fear, and even surprise.
“What we see is that there is a sense of collective learning in the far-right community in many different countries. And a lot of this has to do with creating these alternative information ecosystems and then using them to be able to respond or react to something immediately.”
The question is what Keir Starmer will do. Ebner points out that it is no longer just the dark corners of the internet: politicians are among those who have become radicalised. “They are now saying things they would not have said before and using messages coded for the far right, flirting with conspiracy myths that used to belong to fringe far-right movements.”
And civil liberties groups such as Big Brother Watch fear that some of Starmer’s solutions – including the promise to increase facial recognition systems – could involve creating more technology-driven harms.
Ravi Naik of law firm AWO, which specialises in bringing lawsuits against technology companies, said there were many steps that could be taken, such as the Information Commissioner’s Office enforcing the law to limit data use, or police cracking down on incitement to violence.
“But those actions are taken after the fact,” Naik said. “The issues are too broad for a new prime minister to address on a whim. These are deep and entrenched issues of power, and they will not be resolved in the midst of a crisis or by knee-jerk reactions. We need a real, mature conversation about digital technology and the future we all want.”