More than 100 people have been arrested following the riots that followed the fatal stabbing of three young girls during an attack on a dance class.

Suspected supporters of the far-right English Defence League violently clashed with police officers after a peaceful vigil in Southport on Tuesday, despite pleas from the victims’ families for calm.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the riots for their “violence and thuggery”. Hundreds of far-right rioters attacked a local mosque, ransacking nearby premises and injuring more than 50 police officers. There were further riots in London and Hartlepool on Wednesday, with dozens of people arrested.

Politicians including Southport MP Patrick Hurley suggested the violence was caused by “lies and propaganda” spread on social media after the attack about the identity of the alleged attacker.

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The 17-year-old was charged with three murders and ten attempted murders. Online platforms such as TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) were quickly flooded with false information about the perpetrator’s identity. At the time, police only confirmed that he was born in Cardiff. However, many posts gave the wrong name and surname, and falsely claimed he was a Muslim asylum seeker who arrived in the UK on a small boat in 2023.

Investigative journalist Katherine Denkinson was one of the people who discovered the source of the disinformation – a website called Channel3 Now, which appears to host content that is likely generated by artificial intelligence, but whose origins are unclear.

Researcher Marc Owen Jones has illustrated how right-wing influencers have used the attack to promote an anti-immigration agenda. There were an estimated 27 million views of posts claiming the attacker was a Muslim, migrant or refugee – but far fewer condemned the speculation. But how much of the violence is attributable to such posts?

Social Media and Social Unrest

Online platforms are often blamed for social unrest, with the Sydney shopping centre stabbings in April 2024 being an example.

It also comes as the 13th anniversary of the England riots approaches, during which some politicians called for a temporary shutdown of Facebook and Twitter to quell the violence. However, a study analysing millions of related tweets found that social media was not used to organise or incite the riots.

At the time, I was among those who argued that politicians should blame social media for civil unrest, rather than acknowledge that this violence was a cause of injustice and political tension.

Last summer, French President Emmanuel Macron proposed restricting access to platforms like TikTok if unrest gets out of control.

The bottom line is that the rapid spread of unverified, false, and inflammatory content online is a driver of social unrest. It’s certainly true that social media amplifies content that stokes tensions—in already divided societies.

Sectarian violence in countries including India and Myanmar has been attributed to hate speech and disinformation hosted by online platforms. Facebook has apologised for the “very real human rights impacts that resulted” from its service being used to incite violence in Sri Lanka in 2018.

In the UK, divisions over migration and asylum have been provoked by the inflammatory language of politicians. It is no wonder that there have been other violent demonstrations in asylum hotels and detention centres in recent years.

Read more: Suella Braverman’s Refugee ‘Invasion’ Talk Is a Dangerous Political Ploy Gone Wrong

We cannot ignore the role of political rhetoric. Newly elected MP Nigel Farage released a video in response to the Southport stabbings, questioning whether police deliberately withheld information from the public and wondering whether the incident was terrorism-related. He was criticised for fuelling the situation and giving legitimacy to other unsubstantiated rumours about the attacker.

Growing tensions

The impact of social media on incidents of civil unrest is often overstated. There is little evidence that disinformation persuades law-abiding citizens to engage in disorder. My research on social media and controversial parades and protests in Northern Ireland confirms this.

From the anti-Union flag protests in 2013 to the anti-Northern Ireland Protocol demonstrations in April 2021, social media has been used to organise loyalist street protests that have ended in clashes with police.

In both cases, online platforms were used to share rumors, misinformation, and disinformation that fueled tensions. But most of the online activity I’ve analyzed over the past decade followed the riots, not preceded them. And it was dominated by distant observers, not those who could influence events on the ground.

The violence that has occurred in response to the Southport killings highlights how online platforms can expose people to misinformation and make it harder to stop rising tensions from escalating.

But the reality is that the business model and legal status of these sites means they have no editorial responsibility for the content they host. The most controversial and inflammatory content tends to spread the farthest and fastest across the internet, generating revenue for the tech companies. In other words, they have no real incentive to stop its spread.

We cannot blame social media alone without looking at the source of these tensions. Politicians find it convenient to blame online platforms rather than acknowledge their role in creating toxic political discourse regarding asylum seekers and immigration.

If political leaders really want to avoid further violence, they should start by moderating their language.