, CNN; Kate conspiracies peddled by Russian disinformation group, experts say
"For Kate and her family, the past three months have been a crisis. But for others, they may have brought opportunity.
“You had a swirling mess of speculation, which provides a great place if you’re a foreign actor and you want to get involved,” Martin Innes, a disinformation expert at Cardiff University in Wales, told CNN. “It’s the ideal situation, really.”
Innes and his research team linked 45 social media accounts posting bogus claims about the princess to a Kremlin-affiliated disinformation campaign which has previously peddled conspiracies about Russia’s war in Ukraine and French President Emmanuel Macron. The motive of such campaigns, Innes said, is to “destabilize” Russia’s Western antagonists and “undermine trust” in their institutions.
The United Kingdom’s relationship with Russia has long been mixed. The Brits have been happy to provide services for – and welcome in the wealth of – oligarchs from the former Soviet Union, despite hostilities between London and Moscow. A 2020 UK parliamentary report found “plenty of evidence of Russian interference” in its democratic processes, saying Russian influence had become “the new normal.”
The Cardiff researchers have run a large research program into disinformation since 2018, but began investigating the Kate conspiracies after seeing “unusual patterns in the traffic data” and “spikes coming out of nowhere.”"
