A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, Laura Dodsworth [the two towers ebook .txt] 📗

means if the vaccine ends lockdown. Stephen Reicher, SPI-B advisor, commented to MPs, ‘I used to say until we get a vaccine, all the things we can do to contain an epidemic are behavioural. I was completely wrong, the vaccine itself raises many issues. The vaccine solves nothing, it’s people getting vaccinated that solves things.’ But are covert tactics and emotional manipulation ethical?

Sometimes celebrities are used more obviously than this. Earlier in the year, TV celebrity Amanda Holden tweeted, ‘I’ve downloaded the #NHSCOVID19app to help protect my family, who are my everything. ad. #HaveYouDownloaded covid19. nhs.uk’ . The word ‘ad’ should have had a hashtag before it, but its use indicated that this was a paid promotion. I wonder how paid promotions like this helped the app? Personally, I see it and I think, hang on, if it’s so good, why did you need to be paid to promote it? Richard Shotton told me that ‘having a celebrity associated with your product can be seen as “costly signalling”. People rate products as better quality if the manufacturer sponsors a major TV programme. Celebrities can have a flatter effect. People who like the celebrity may rate a product better, but people who don’t like the celebrity might like the product less.’ A risky strategy then?

A company called Main Street One in the US contacted celebrities, offering to pay them to promote vaccines: ‘I’m reaching out to share a paid partnership opportunity to share your voice about what the COVID vaccine means to you… Can you use a personal story to explain why you’re blocking out misinformation around the COVID vaccine and prioritising the health of your community? Why are you confident that vaccines are both safe AND effective?’

I don’t know if companies would pay people to promote vaccines in the UK. Again, it is ethically dubious. (I don’t for a moment think the people involved with Ray’s video were paid, by the way, they were clearly involved in good faith.) The Main Street One pitch is an insight into the origins of the kinds of messages we see endorsed on global social media. As Main Street One says, they are about ‘messages people are ready to believe, delivered by messengers they already trust.’

Breakthrough Media, which works with RICU, is now rebranded as Zinc Network. This is how they describe their mission on their website: ‘At the centre of our work are people and communities. To reach and influence them, we work with a network of grassroots partners – those closest to the issues we tackle. We design behavioural science informed interventions that change attitudes and actions for the better.’ They are more upfront now about ‘countering extremism and radicalisation’ and working with government. As well as radicalisation they also focus on ‘preventing online harms’.

On 19 November 2020 there was a coordinated campaign of over 300 tweets, comprised of accounts which looked genuine and some which appeared to be bots, to promote the Online Harms Bill. The tweet said: ‘More and more people are scared of getting #vaccinated after reading anti-vax #fakenews online. We finally need a law to rein in the #socialmedia giants @BorisJohnson #onlineharms’.

The tweet campaign was initiated by SumOfUs, but the use of obvious bots indicated that it was being amplified beyond their own dedicated followers. I wondered who initiated the campaign and who deployed these accounts to push for online censorship? I spoke to Silkie Carlo, who had also noticed the campaign. She told me that campaigns run by her organisation Big Brother Watch had also been artificially boosted in the past, and you could never get to the bottom of who did it and why. We agreed it made Twitter a deceptive and toxic environment for most unwitting users on the platform.

Also on 19 November, MP Damian Collins took part in a debate about online harms in the House of Commons, pushing for a strong bill. (Interestingly, Collins is the co-founder of Infotagian, a Covid fact-checking service.) Furthermore, Met Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu called for a debate on 19 November on the introduction of new laws to punish people who spread anti-vaccination conspiracy theories. So, 19 November was a day when there were different types of public calls for an online harms bill – was this coordinated?

I approached SumOfUs and exchanged emails with an employee. She said she was not aware of how their campaign had been co-opted and she said they hadn’t worked with the government. I also approached Zinc Network to see if they were involved or had suggestions but did not receive a reply.

Twitter abounds with shady tweet campaigns. The potential deliberate amplification of the SumOfUs campaign is one of many. At the end of January there was a series of tweets all proclaiming ‘Boris we love you and stand by you, your [sic] doing a great job, keep working hard and doing as your [sic] doing! My prime minister [heart emoji]’ As the tweets were identical, I’m afraid it can’t be a natural and spontaneous outpouring of love for Boris Johnson. Paid ‘promotion’? If so, it was very, very badly done. People playing a prank? The opposition? It’s hard to second guess such a clumsy campaign.

Another facet to Twitter propaganda is the use of troll accounts to discredit people. You will notice that a common retort to trolls in the UK is that they are ‘77th’ – operatives in the UK army’s 77th Brigade. It is impossible to know if these individuals are genuine people, or paid trolls, or who employs them, let alone whether they are part of the 77th Brigade, but this does reveal the suspicion raised by nasty tweets and the sense of ‘organisation’ behind it. It also reveals a sizeable contingent of people who don’t trust their own government. I spoke to former footballer and sports commentator Matt le Tissier, who has come under fire for being outspoken against lockdown, and he showed me reams of examples of trolls he’d had to block. They can be characterised by