“I have to be more vigilant and careful when I’m going out,” admits Marianna Spring.
She is talking about her role as the BBC’s first ever disinformation and social media correspondent, and her investigations into online hate that have made her one of the most trolled women in Britain.
“Most of the people who send those violent threats would never do anything about it. But it only takes one person radicalised by this kind of hate for something bad to happen,” she says.
Spring’s work, which includes a new BBC Sounds podcast, Marianna in Conspiracyland, a Radio 4 commission, inevitably sees her delve into some of the darkest corners of the internet.
She has tracked the rise in Britain of online conspiracy theorists, from anti-vaxxers to “disaster trolls”, who claim terrorist attacks have been staged.
By highlighting the links between many online conspiracies and UK far-right movements, Spring has become a target for violent and misogynstic abuse. “I’m very lucky at the BBC to have a brilliant team to support me and keep on top of that,” she tells i.
“At the extreme end there are people calling for Nuremberg-style trials of doctors and politicians over the pandemic, saying they are complicit in plots and need to be hanged or executed. It’s a scary thing to be honest as someone who receives threats like that frequently.”
Analysts at the University of Sheffield assessed 75,000 tweets directed at Spring over six months last year, and found that 55 per cent of the abuse was designed to discredit her as a journalist, while 27 per cent was sexist and misogynistic. The remainder was classified as generally abusive.
And then, as with so much on the internet, Elon Musk got involved. In March there was another spike in abuse towards Spring, after the Twitter boss told his 130 million followers that he was “rolling on the floor laughing my ass off” at her Panorama investigation into the platform.
The programme concluded that Twitter had failed to protect users from trolling, disinformation and child sexual exploitation since Musk’s takeover in April last year.
“When I saw my face on his Twitter feed, I first thought, ‘Oh wow, great, he’s engaged with the investigation,’” Spring says.
“Then I looked at mentions and it was ‘wow’ in a different way. It triggered a wave of hate and now we have to factor in that online hate has become a tool to target journalists.”
The 27-year-old, who was named in Forbes’s Media and Marketing 30 Under 30 list in 2021, stands by the investigation. “Twitter wasn’t exactly on top of its trolls before Musk but it feels more toxic now and there is a lot more hate.”
In her new podcast, Spring discusses whether the conspiracy-theory-fuelled riots at the US Capitol and a foiled far-right coup-attempt in Germany could happen here.
“People will be shocked at how normalised violent rhetoric and evidence-free conspiracy theories have become in Britain,” she says.
“This conspiracy movement began with false allegations about 5G being somehow linked to coronavirus. But the movement kept growing after the pandemic.”
In one episode, Spring challenges Darren Nesbitt, the Devon-based founder of “truthpaper” The Light, which promotes theories that the Covid pandemic was a hoax and that vaccines are weaponised mind-control devices.
“The Light and its Telegram channel is now circulating among a lot of communities in the UK,” Spring says. “In Totnes, the community is divided by a motivated minority, there are examples of intimidation and harassment, council meetings disrupted.”
She describes how such “conspiracy rhetoric seeks to cast doubt on the democratic process, to make everything seem a hoax”, and warned that such thinking wasn’t the sole preserve of the far-right: “It’s drawing in left-leaning, alternative communities as well.”
Spring, named Audio Presenter of the Year by the Broadcasting Press Guild for her Radio 4 work, is also concerned about the seep of outandlish views into the mainstream.
Recently, Ofcom rebuked GB News for airing a “serious conspiracy theory without challenge or context” about vaccines during a show by presenter Mark Steyn, who has since left the channel.
“It’s important that we do rigorous investigative reporting and don’t amplify issues that are misleading,” she says. “I found myself targeted on GB News when my BBC role was announced. They misunderstood my reporting which focuses on the real world harm caused by disinformation and hate.”
Spring is also a leading on-screen face of BBC Verify, a new initiative which will be “fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation and explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth”.
“It’s not that we’re deciding what it true and false,” she says. “Our job is to interrogate evidence and then expose how extreme mistruths are causing harm. It’s about transparency and showing our workings.”
Doesn’t Spring ever hanker for a beat that brings less heat? “Because of the trolls I can’t share a huge amount of personal information and I’m very bad at switching off. I do consider the risks to what I do but I believe it is important public service journalism. I do have friends and like doing fun things. What can I say? I like my cat and I’m a Spurs fan.”
All 10 episodes of Marianna in Conspiracyland will be available on BBC Sounds on 12 June. It’ll broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on weekdays, daily from 12 June at 9.45 am
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