# Incident I00039: MerkelFacebook

* **Summary:** Top stories about Merkel in both German and English were negative and misleading, most published from fake news sites.

* **incident type**: incident

* **Year started:** 2017

* **Countries:** unknown , Germany

* **Found via:** OII

* **Date added:** 2019-02-24
 

| Technique | Description given for this incident |
| --------- | ------------------------- |


DO NOT EDIT ABOVE THIS LINE - PLEASE ADD NOTES BELOW

Actor:

* Right-wing FB pages
* Fake news sites e.g. yesimright.com; shoebat.com; endingthefed.com; truthfeed.com; yournewswire.com.
* British tabloids: Express, MailOnline.

Timeframe: Data was collected and analyzed in 2016.

Date: 2016.

Presumed goals:
* To attack Merkel’s liberal position on the refugee crisis.

Method:
* Fake news sites mix legitimate partisan political content with false and conspiratorial information.
* Large right-wing FB pages in the US also share anti-Merkel content.
* Most popular Merkel articles on Facebook also come from legitimate, but negative and right-wing news sources.
* German links that generated most engagement in 2016 spread conspiratorial claims about Merkel’s mental health.

Counters:
* No counter actions were taken.

Related incidents: 

* Defamation of Modamani – a Syrian refugee - who took a selfie with Merkel and was accused on social media as having links to terrorism.

References:

* Source: Buzzfeed analysis
* https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/hyperpartisan-sites-and-facebook-pages-are-publishing-false
* https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/business/syria-refugee-anas-modamani-germany-facebook.html