The whirlwind of conspiracy theories that enveloped Catherine, Princess of Wales before she announced her cancer diagnosis last week probably didn’t need any help from a foreign state. But researchers in Britain said Wednesday that a notorious Russian disinformation operation set things in motion.
Martin Innes, a digital disinformation expert at Cardiff University in Wales, said he and his colleagues tracked 45 social media accounts that posted a false claim about Catherine on a Kremlin-linked disinformation network, which has previously been divisive about Ukrainian President Volodymyr. Zelensky, but also about France’s support for Ukraine.
As in those cases, Professor Innes said, the influence campaign appeared designed to foment division, deepen a sense of chaos in society and erode trust in institutions – in this case the British royal family and the news media.
“It provokes an emotional response,” he says. “The story was already formulated in conspiracy terms, so you can address those people. And people who support the royal family are getting angry.”
The motive, he said, was likely commercial as well as political. Social media traffic about Catherine skyrocketed over the past three months as a lack of information about her condition created a void that filled an online army with rumors and speculation. For the Russian network, amplifying these messages through their accounts would allow them to increase their own traffic stats and follower numbers.
It is not clear who hired the disinformation network to go after Catherine, but it has a track record of campaigns to undermine the countries and people at odds with the Kremlin. Britain’s strong support for Ukraine and London’s long-standing antagonism with Moscow would make the country a tempting target for the Russians.
The Daily Telegraph, a London newspaper, reported Sunday that British officials were concerned that Russia, China and Iran were fueling disinformation about Catherine in an effort to destabilize the country.
Asked about these reports in Parliament on Monday, the Deputy Prime Minister, Oliver Dowden, did not name the countries but said it was “a reminder to all of us that it is important for us to ensure that we deal with valid and reliable information, and are rightly skeptical of many online sources.”
In 2020, a British parliamentary committee concluded that Russia had mounted a long, sophisticated campaign to undermine British democracy – using tactics ranging from disinformation and election interference to funneling dirty money and hiring members of the House of Lords. The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the conclusions as ‘Russophobia’.
Kensington Palace, where Catherine and her husband, Prince William, have their offices, declined to comment on Russia’s role in the recent rumors. The palace has appealed to the news media and the public to give Catherine privacy after she announced in a video last Friday that she had cancer.
Professor Innes, who leads a research program investigating the causes and consequences of digital disinformation, said his team noticed a mysterious spike in a certain type of social media posting on March 19, a day after a video emerged of Catherine and William having a relationship. left the nearby grocery store. their home in Windsor.
A frequently repeated post on It asked: “Why do these major media outlets want us to believe this is Kate and William? But as we can see, it’s not Kate or William. …”
Upon tracing the 45 accounts that reused this message, Professor Innes discovered that they all came from a single master account, called Master Firs. It showed the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation known in the industry as Doppelgänger, he said.
Since 2017, Doppelgänger has been associated with creating fake websites posing as real news organizations in Europe and the United States. Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced sanctions against two Russians and their companies for involvement in cyber influence operations. They are believed to be part of the Doppelgänger network.
Catherine isn’t the only member of the royal family to have become the subject of an online feeding frenzy in Russia. On the same day that multiple reports about the video appeared, an erroneous report about the death of King Charles III began circulating on Telegram, a social media network popular in Russia.
These reports were later picked up by the Russian media, forcing the British embassies in Moscow and Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, to deny them as ‘fake news’. Like Catherine, Charles, 75, is being treated for cancer, although he continues to greet visitors privately and plans to attend church services at Easter.
In addition to Russian involvement, rumors and gossip about Catherine’s health emerged in many corners of the Internet, including on accounts sympathetic to William’s brother, Prince Harry, and his wife Meghan. With such a widespread online frenzy, the impact of any state actor could be limited.
“It is very difficult to isolate just one component,” said Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of the EU DisinfoLab, a Brussels-based research organization that played a role in identifying the Russia-based disinformation group in 2022 and naming it Doppelgänger. “The question is what is being made up by the media, online influencers or inauthentic sources. Everything is connected.”
Such campaigns are also particularly difficult to measure, he said, because social media companies like
Also, some disinformation hiring companies are not very discriminatory about the material they spread online, Mr. Alaphilippe said. “You might see bots pushing a Russian story on Monday,” he said. “They can play online games on Tuesday. On Wednesdays, they can run crypto scam campaigns.”
Even as awareness of Russian disinformation campaigns has increased since the 2016 US presidential election, the scale of internet deception and falsehood spreading has not diminished.
Through bots, online trolls and disinformation peddlers, Russia-linked groups are jumping on news events to sow confusion and discord. Ukraine has been the main focus of their efforts over the past two years, as President Vladimir V. Putin seeks to undermine the West’s resolve to continue supporting the war.
A French minister recently accused Russia of artificially stoking concerns about last year’s bedbug scare in Paris. Another false claim that media monitoring groups said was amplified by Russia was that the European Union would allow insect powder to be mixed into food.
Spreading rumors about Catherine is a more traditional influence operation, but the Russians have refined their tactics as governments and independent investigators become more sophisticated in tracking their activities.
Fake news sites have emerged in the United States and Europe to fuel Russian propaganda and potentially influence the 2024 elections. In YouTube and TikTok videos, people have posed as Ukrainian doctors and film producers to tell fake stories favorable to Russian interests.
“Whether they are spreading it for profit or political purposes, these types of actors tend to jump on anything compelling and controversial,” said Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. “Just like some news media,” he added, although their motives could differ.
“If it is politically motivated,” Professor Nielsen said, “it is rarely about persuasion as much as it is about attempts to undermine people’s trust in the media environment.”