In the days before Kate Middleton revealed her cancer diagnosis in a video message, Kensington Palace’s clumsy communication management led to the circulation of numerous rumors and wild theories about the Princess of Wales’s health, however, researchers The British claim to have found evidence of an organized disinformation campaign originating from Russia that would have helped magnify the crisis.
Martin Innes, a digital disinformation expert at the Security, Crime and Intelligence Innovation Institute at Cardiff University in Wales, says he and his colleagues tracked down 45 social media accounts that posted a false claim about Princess Catherine and were able to link it to her. to a Kremlin-linked disinformation network that had previously spread rumors about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and France’s support for Ukraine.
As on those occasions, the disinformation campaign seemed to aim to deepen divisions, increase the feeling of social chaos and erode distrust in institutions.
According to Cardiff University experts, many of the accounts spreading conspiracy theories had been created in the last month and were fed by a “master” account, which generated content that was in turn responded to and shared by a cascade. of fake accounts and attracted new users.
Identical phrases, such as “Why do these major media outlets want us to believe that they are Kate and William?”, in reference to the video in which the princes of Wales were leaving a market, were reproduced identically by multiple accounts whose behavior suggested the existence of an organized network.
Cardiff investigators highlight that these accounts shared content about the Princess of Wales from a fake news website linked to Russia and written in English that contained the “verified facts” logo.
It is unclear who might have hired the disinformation network, but last Sunday the Daily Telegraph reported that the British government was concerned that Russia, China and Iran were fueling disinformation about Catherine in an effort to destabilize the country.
“Part of the modus operandi of hostile states is to destabilize things, whether by undermining the legitimacy of our elections or other institutions,” said a source who spoke to the British newspaper on condition of anonymity.
Faced with suspicions of interference, the Russian embassy in London categorically rejected the accusations on Wednesday. “Russia categorically rejects the unfounded accusations from anonymous ‘sources in Whitehall’ (British Government) of allegedly ‘spreading disinformation about the Princess of Wales,'” says the statement reproduced by the Russian agency Sputnik. “This is not and has never been ours.” political,” added the diplomatic mission.
Last Friday, the Princess of Wales published a video in which she reported that she was receiving cancer treatment. In the recording, Catalina, 42, narrated how she discovered that she suffered from the disease after undergoing abdominal surgery last January in London and that she is in a process of “preventive chemotherapy.”
