Misinformation spread rapidly and led to rioters clashing with police outside a mosque in the wake of a knife attack that left three children dead in Southport.
By Tom Cheshire, Data and Forensics correspondent, and Sam Doak, OSINT producer
2:42
Information abhors a vacuum.
So when the police and media, for legal reasons, put out only a few details about the Southport attacker - that he was 17 years old and born in Cardiff - misinformation rushed in instead.
As far-right groups then began reposting the false claims and organising on messaging app Telegram, it made for a violent outcome.
The misinformation started almost as soon as news of the knife attack on a Taylor Swift dance workshop for children broke on Monday, 29 July. Accounts on X, formerly Twitter, quickly began promoting false narratives about the attacker's nationality and religion.
Anti-migrant sentiment goes viral
One account, European Invasion, which has more than 360,000 followers, said the suspect was "a Muslim immigrant" - a tweet that earned nearly four million impressions.
Andrew Tate, the controversial influencer, follows that account, and amplified that false narrative, saying that the attacker was an "illegal migrant".
The misinformation spread quickly, and social networks were quickly inundated with a tidal wave of similar content, almost immediately after the attack.
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