Disaster Trolls: 5. Who Believes This Stuff?
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BBC
2.8 • 947 Ratings
🗓️ 30 October 2022
⏱️ 16 minutes
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Summary
How widespread is the belief in conspiracy theories that falsely claim UK terror attacks are faked? Marianna Spring reveals the results of a survey carried out for the BBC.
There’s a moment of revelation when she talks to Alicia, a fan of Richard D Hall, to learn more about the appeal of the online conspiracy show host. We also hear how Hall’s online reach has grown during the pandemic.
In this BBC Radio 4 podcast series, Marianna Spring, the BBC’s disinformation and social media correspondent, investigates how survivors of the Manchester Arena bombing and other tragedies, are targeted with online abuse and false claims that deny the reality of the horrific events they have lived through.
How popular are these extreme conspiracy theories? What are the factors that make people more susceptible to believing them? This episode provides some insight from the results of an online survey carried out for the BBC. King's College London interviewed more than 4000 adults in the UK, between 1-9 October 2022.
Presenter: Marianna Spring Producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Ed Main
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Savings, credit cards, car finance, reclaiming, insurance, investing, power of attorney, decision, |
| 0:06.2 | indecision, analysis, paralysis. |
| 0:09.4 | Don't panic. |
| 0:10.4 | The Martin Lewis podcast is twice weekly, helping you navigate our complex consumer world. |
| 0:15.2 | I'll walk you through a big money saving topic step by step. |
| 0:18.4 | Then in question time, you set the agenda and ask whatever's on your |
| 0:22.1 | mind. Would you rather be locked in an empty shopping centre with a thousand snakes or just one |
| 0:26.9 | gorilla? Within reason. The Martin Lewis podcast, listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio |
| 0:36.4 | podcasts. |
| 0:43.0 | A storm is rolling in across the hills of southern Wales. |
| 0:48.9 | I'd come to see Richard D. Hall at his market stall. |
| 1:02.0 | Hall is the person I've been investigating in this series, who has pushed conspiracies that terror attacks are faked, that survivors are lying, and the victims aren't really dead. When I challenged him, he wasn't particularly forthcoming. |
| 1:05.0 | You know, your profiting from the worst day of these people's lives, how does that mean you feel? |
| 1:09.0 | Well, if you read my book, it's all the answers are in there. |
| 1:12.6 | But the answers aren't in there. Instead, there's a series of false claims |
| 1:17.6 | that would be laughably ridiculous if they weren't so offensive and harmful. |
| 1:22.6 | And yet, critically, these claims reach and convince a much wider audience than you might expect. |
| 1:30.8 | So that's why I'm sticking around in South Wales to meet Alicia, a fan of Hawls. |
| 1:36.5 | He talks about things that other people don't speak about. |
| 1:39.2 | I want to see whether being confronted by the truth of Hall's claims might change her mind. |
| 1:44.0 | If that is the truth, like you said about the the victims, I mean, that that is for Paul in. |
| 1:48.6 | For Radio 4, I'm Marianna Spring, and this is disaster trolls. |
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