• The passing of Queen Elizabeth II has exposed a model for how misinformation thrives in the wake of major news events.
• Malicious actors are leveraging this to garner attention and spread confusion.
• Photographs that had been digitally changed and other false information were circulated on social media.

The passing of Queen Elizabeth II has exposed a model for how misinformation thrives in the wake of significant news events, with malicious actors leveraging this to garner attention and spread confusion.

Social media users published photographs that had been digitally changed and other false information as Britain grieved the passing of its longest-reigning monarch, blaming her 96-year-old death on factors including the Covid-19 vaccine and Hillary Clinton.

However, the disinformation strategies used in response to the revelation made by Buckingham Palace on September 8 mostly consisted of outdated techniques modified to fit the new facts and make falsehoods stick in people’s minds.

Similar falsehoods proliferated in the wake of other significant events, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Jeffrey Epstein’s passing, with the QAnon conspiracy movement also making an appearance.

According to Gordon Pennycook, a behavioural scientist at the University of Regina in Canada, “familiarity leads to increased believability.”

As soon as the queen entered a state of medical observation, red flags of misinformation began to appear when fake Twitter accounts masquerading as news sources published and spread bogus updates on her condition.

Once the palace announced her passing, the action picked in speed.

“People all around the world were aware of and impacted by the queen’s death, giving purveyors of misinformation a virtually limitless range of false narratives to choose from,” said Dan Evon at the nonprofit News Literacy Project (NLP).

A months-old video of dancers in front of Buckingham Palace was misidentified as an Irish funeral celebration among the flood. According to a bogus social media post, former US president Donald Trump was knighted by the queen. Meghan Markle appeared to be sporting a “The Queen Is Dead” T-shirt in an altered photo.

Covid-19 shots were allegedly to blame for the death of the queen, a claim anti-vaccine activists have made about famous people who passed away, including actress Betty White and comedian Bob Saget.

Others accused Clinton of being the bad guy, saying the queen revealed before she passed away that she had political dirt on the former secretary of state and US presidential contender.

Other world leaders have been given credit for that made-up statement. It is a persistent meme that parodies the idea that the Clintons were involved in the murder of political rivals.

“When big events happen, people in different communities, particularly activists, try to figure out if there is an angle for them there,” said Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP).

“For an anti-vaccine activist, they figure out if the death can be mapped to vaccines. For a (New World Order) conspiracy theorist, maybe they map to Clinton or Epstein.”

[embedpost slug=”/queen-elizabeth-ii-watched-the-crown-on-projector-says-matt-smith/”]