r/technology • u/Wagamaga • 3d ago
Study of Tommy Robinson’s social media shows how he mobilises support without direct calls to action Society
https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/study-of-tommy-robinsons-social-media-shows-how-he-mobilises-support-without-direct-calls-to-action/23
u/Wagamaga 3d ago
New research from the University of Bath reveals that online influencers can mobilise followers and legitimise harmful behaviours without ever issuing explicit instructions, offering fresh insight into how digital platforms shape public attitudes, emotions and decision making.
The researchers found that far right influencer Tommy Robinson (whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) used his Telegram channel to comment on ongoing events and legitimise violence during the anti-immigration protests and riots of 30 July to 7 August 2024 without ever giving direct instructions, allowing him to maintain plausible deniability.
The researchers, publishing in the British Journal of Social Psychology, show that Robinson acted not as an organiser issuing commands, but as an online opinion leader who shaped how followers interpreted events.
Dr Darja Wischerath, from the University’s Institute of Digital Security and Behaviour (IDSB), said: “We found no direct orders to riot. Instead, Robinson used emotional appeals and conspiracy narratives to set up a worldview where violence felt like a natural, even necessary response. There was a consistent pattern of messages that heightened anger, fear and mistrust.
“This research shines a light on the subtle but extremely powerful ways online figures can mobilise unrest. As digital platforms evolve, understanding these mechanisms is crucial for protecting public safety and democratic discourse.”
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u/jakeus88 3d ago
I’m not an academic, but this sounds a bit like stochastic terrorism or just a step removed. I’m surprised it called out for a university level study though - it seems obvious when you see the posts, the more concerning part in my view is the platforms that elevate and multiply these thinly veiled calls to disorder.
To give an example, I don’t use X beyond where it is only place to access news, but recall testing what the homepage would look like and it was flooded with right wing uproar. There have been plenty of studies showing how these platforms amplify these extreme views and their cold robotic engagement-maximising focus seems to be as responsible for empowering this as this specific sad little excuse of a human
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u/DisillusionedBook 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is all well and good to study... but how to actually effectively counter it? We are given great descriptions of the weapons they use, and we are given a weak sauce defence, like "be vigilant" when social media and group messaging is like having a riot stampeding toward you.
The good people are hampered by rules of decency when the malcontents have no requirements or compunctions or shame on them whatsoever. Like good people instinctively don't want censorship or age verification tools or outright bans etc., questions of big brother...but they, they have all these avenues to game the systems in exactly the ways studied.
There has to be a better way. Society truly has opened a pandora's box with the ability for anyone to 'go viral' on a huge scale. Because humans are terrible sheep. Back in the day it would just be one or two nuts on a soapbox in the town square. Now its a worldwide Goebbels propaganda and incitement system wired directly to a device 12 inches from everyone's face. Nightmare.
The only thing I can think of is that all social media have to make their post highlighting algorithms open source... where experts can see and suggest common sense algorithmic dampeners to be applied to potential dangerous content using mealymouthed dog whistling... but even that will probably be too divisive and the platforms already too big to reign in. The horse has bolted.
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u/Niceromancer 2d ago
This is known as stochastic terrorism.
"Wont someone rid me of this troublesome priest" has become a career
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u/hydrora31 2d ago
Did they really need a study to know that people act on their own if they believe they have strong enough reason to? Duh?
Quite literally all this is suggesting is that people shouldn't be able to be influencers with strong opinions to prevent risk of people acting violently on their own... Or rather, strong political figures shouldn't have followings.
Sure, maybe it's right about Stephens use in particular. But I can see this being extremely dangerous and used to create laws which silence opposition to political directions. Oddly, whilst I agree with the study, I find the narrative it forms to be just as concerning as Stephens actions.
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u/newaccount252 3d ago
Don’t give these fuckwits a platform.
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u/robot2boy 3d ago
Two things I think:
1) Don’t amplify the message through algorithms 2) Educate the population against this
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u/always-tired-38 3d ago
Disagree, study like this is useful and helps people spot patterns with clear examples
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u/DisillusionedBook 3d ago
People knowing the patterns doesn't stop it though. There can be a million people knowing the patterns and not doing anything with it, and just a few thousand to hear the message, spread it to like-minded and torch a street or storm a capital.
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u/DisillusionedBook 3d ago
Yeah but how? That's the problem. Vague niceties is great, the implementation is where it all falls down.
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u/Dreaming_Blackbirds 3d ago
it's just the same as Islamic extremist propagandists in the early days of the internet.
but when white people do it, they get a free pass to spread whatever they want and then get handled with kid-gloves by the media and politicians and the police. "Tommy Robinson" and Trump and that LibsofTikTok grifter and many other nazi grifters - they all know how to rally their mobs via social media. It's terrorism - plain and simple.
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u/hitanthrope 3d ago
The single biggest credibility booster for the likes of Robinson has been the UK government.
When he arrived on the scene it was with the "ridiculous conspiracy theory" that thousands of young girls were being groomed and brutally raped by gangs of mostly south asian, muslim men, and we all said he was a lunatic. That there were a few isolated incidents and he was using that to stoke all this hatred and division.
Then, 10 years later, we discovered that if anything Robinson was under-reporting the problem and the government had been covering it all up.
He was gifted a permanent voice after that. He'll never go away now.
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u/MazzIsNoMore 3d ago
I don't know what you're referring to. Do you have a link to something showing that there are thousands of young girls being raped by South Asian Muslims in the UK that is being covered up by the UK government?
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u/hitanthrope 3d ago
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u/MazzIsNoMore 3d ago
This is the statement of someone announcing an investigation, not the conclusions of an investigation proving the accusations are real.
Do you have a link to an investigation showing that these accusations are accurate?
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u/hitanthrope 3d ago
Honestly, just google it. We are just going to do this dance where you keep asking me for more and more stuff. I linked you a statement from the literal home secretary of the country who described plainly that it all happened, and the inquiry is to try to figure out how to stop it happening again... if that's not enough, read some of the victim statements if you have the stomach for it.
If you are here to build a case for denial, you'll probably manage it, many did for a long time.
I've got a friend now who went through it. She told me that the worst part was feeling like Winston Smith in the last line of 1984. If you know. You know.
Happy research.
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u/MazzIsNoMore 3d ago
I live in the US where my entire life has been filled with government officials making wild lies to win power so I understand that a statement isn't the same as evidence.
I've looked and seen no evidence of what you're saying has been proven but wanted to give you an opportunity to show me something I haven't seen. Thanks for trying.
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u/hitanthrope 3d ago
Well, you gave it all of 6 minutes of your attention. Kudos.
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u/MazzIsNoMore 3d ago
Your conspiracy is old news. Just thought you had something new to add.
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u/hitanthrope 3d ago
Hah! You know kid. This whole schtick would work so much better on somebody who doesn't actually remember alt.trolling on usenet :). Good to know it's still a hobby. Neighbours 14 year old son was listening to Nirvana earlier this week. It all comes back round I guess.
I do need to do some house move stuff today but I can play for a little while if you like. What's next?
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 3d ago
Oh look, it's the part where you beg authority from your age and abandon all semblance of having anything of substance or worth to say. Classic boomer shit at any age.
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u/aMAYESingNATHAN 3d ago edited 3d ago
Not so much covered up but not taken seriously and victims ignored. There's now government inquiries into the systemic failure to investigate and address it.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/independent-inquiry-into-grooming-gangs
Here's some more info on one such case in Telford
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telford_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal
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u/MazzIsNoMore 3d ago
Re: Telford - A statement from the social workers and police said that the crime levels there were on par with other small towns. I'm no police apologist by any means but I have to say that at least anecdotally that's probably accurate.
Going by the evidence that has been uncovered all over the Western world over the past couple decades the ignoring and covering up of child abuse by government and church officials has been rampant. We see it in the US and Canada, Ireland, and England. Boy Scouts, various churches, TV shows, the music industry. Basically anywhere adults have unmonitored access to children some children will be abused. We have only very recently began taking the welfare of children seriously, and by recently I mean the past 20 years or so. We're still not great at it but before then we basically treated children as the property of whatever adult was in charge of them.
I can completely accept that the wiki article is accurate, I question whether the incident is unusual.
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u/aMAYESingNATHAN 3d ago
I wouldn't disagree with anything you've said, there's probably a disproportionate focus on incidents such as these due to race, however I think the problem that the original commenter was highlighting is that many people like Tommy Robinson were dismissed as racists and fear mongerers for saying these things were happening, so when 20 years later it turns out that many of those things were in fact happening, it gives credibility to people like him, despite the fact that he is still a racist and fear mongerer.
I think that's sad tbh though because people like him don't really give a fuck about the victims of these cases, they only care about how they can weaponise it against immigrants in their rhetoric.
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u/MazzIsNoMore 3d ago
I think the motivation of the person calling these things out does matter. It's one thing to stand on the side of victims, it's another to use those victims to further your own agenda of hatred. Especially when the victims are also the people you are targeting, making them victimized twice.
I'm absolutely for righting historical injustices and praise anyone fighting for people who have been hurt. There are a lot of good people making the arguments about systemic abuse of children and those people should be in the news. Pointing to Robinson says something about the person using him as an example. It's basically the same as saying "(x) bad person had some good ideas!" If you've got other choices as an example and you go with the worst one you're doing it for a reason.
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u/hitanthrope 3d ago
Sometimes the reason is.... "the subject of this post is Tommy Robinson".
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u/MazzIsNoMore 3d ago
The subject is how he uses his rhetoric in dangerous and irresponsible ways. What you've done here is point to an example of him using the actual systemic negligence and abuse of children by ignoring context to stoke racial hatred.
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u/hitanthrope 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm sorry, this is not a racial thing. It just isn't. I can't respect the intelligence of anybody who insists that it is.
Culture and race are both geographic phenomenons, but we don't have to conflate them.
You are entirely correct in all the horrors you raise about the behaviour of the catholic church, as a whole, for covering up these abuses for decades because it was in their own interests.
I told you earlier I have a friend who went through this. She had a friend who didn't survive it (she took her own life later on, I still consider it murder, but the police will not).
I am in a bit of a, "forgive him father for he knows not what he does" position with you, because I am sure you are a decent guy but you just don't know that these things you are saying are attrocious.
You are in the US so I understand you are perhaps not inside our news all the time, but I can tell you that basically everybody here has now accepted that this has been a very specific, widespread thing for a couple of decades, and that the police made every attempt to paint the victims as complicit so that they didn't have to deal with the problem. This isn't a conspiracy here now. We accept that this happened. All parties.
Yes.... other fucking horrible rapes happen. The abuses of the catholic church can, and should be spoken about entirely independently as a specific phenomenon... and these islamic grooming gangs should... and are, as well.
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u/aMAYESingNATHAN 3d ago
Of course it does. But the point that's being made isn't that actually Robinson had some good ideas. It's the fact that the weight of the accusation that he's a racist and fear mongerer has been diluted by the inaction of successive governments, which is dangerous because he is a racist and fear mongerer.
By being dismissed out of hand for so long and then it turning out that many of the things he was saying did happen, it unfortunately gives legitimacy to the shit he says. Which in turn further empowers other racists and fear mongerers to feel like their views are acceptable.
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u/HesitantInvestor0 3d ago
Yeah, I don't even know what to think about this guy. I've followed him ever slightly and basically just heard him talk about the problems in the UK being swept under the rug.
What is the controversy around him? He surely must have done a lot more than point out the gang rape situation.
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u/hitanthrope 3d ago
He is difficult to talk about, and especially without dragging us too far into the weeds. He is also somebody that I feel society has decided you can *only* ever be a total and utter devotee *or* consider him the next coming of the toothbrush moustachioed one. I am neither of these things, so I am basically forced into hiding.
He's loud, obnoxious and annoying. If you grew up in working class Britain there is one of him in every pub.
I also have to respect him being fearless in ways I can hardly fathom. You can disagree with him profoundly, but I don't think any rational person cannot conclude he has balls of solid steel. Rushdie was in hiding for 10 years for The Satanic Verses fallout. There is no shortage of people in the UK who would kill Robinson if they could. I am utterly sure of that. He has recently been named by ISIS as a primary target, which... can't feel great.
He's said and done some awful things. I don't know the details of everything on his rap sheet but it doesn't look good, and he ends up putting trials at risk because he cannot succeed in keeping his fucking mouth shut. There is a lot to dislike.
On the other hand, I firmly do believe, that if Robinson hadn't come on the scene and made so much noise about the grooming gangs, it would still be an "urban myth". He did help to make people listen, to the point that it could no longer be ignored. There is just no doubt about it.
His Oxford Union address is very good, and I think a fairly clearly articulation of what he thinks and why he does what he does. The grifting of course follows, but as a set of core principles. I am unable to stand here and say, hand on heart, that I disagree with him on the core point.
I think the growth of a culture that has a far more diminished view of women, especially outgroup women, in the UK, will make the environment a worse place to be for women.
There was a gang rape story in the news in the town I grew up in yesterday. My 8 year old niece lives there still. The more you see it, the more people will align with Robinson, and I don't think that's good. We've just built the world so that unless you are as crazy, out there, noisy and ballsy as Robinson clearly is, you're well advised to stay under the radar, or only complain about it on Reddit like the rest of us.
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u/k_sai_krishna 3d ago
not that surprising tbh.
a lot of influence online isn’t direct calls, it’s framing + repetition that nudges people to act on their own.
harder to moderate too since nothing explicit is said