1.6 KiB
1.6 KiB
Incident I00039: MerkelFacebook
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Summary: Top stories about Merkel in both German and English were negative and misleading, most published from fake news sites.
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incident type: incident
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Year started: 2017
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Countries: unknown , Germany
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Found via: OII
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Date added: 2019-02-24
| Technique | Description given for this incident |
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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: