Social media accounts linked to pro-Kremlin sources saw a surge in activity in the days surrounding the BBC Panorama scandal, in an apparent attempt to weaponise distrust in the national broadcaster.
A spike in Russian-language and Russia-geolocated posts in the first half of this month peaked on 10 November, the day after the resignations of the BBC’s director general Tim Davie and chief executive of BBC News Deborah Turness.
An analysis by Reset Tech for The Observer and BBC Radio 4’s The Naked Week found that on Telegram, posts across 65 channels generated 1.1m views. On X, 1,318 mentions were published by 232 accounts, with the 25 most prominent posts seen more than 800,000 times.
Three main themes emerged from the posts: that the BBC is a tool for disinformation and propaganda; that the Kremlin is supportive of Donald Trump’s legal threats against the BBC and that the licence fee should be abolished.
In some instances, posters linked back to the BBC’s coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a bid to undermine trust in the broadcaster. Posts unearthed by Reset Tech on Telegram include people saying: “Imagine what they’re doing regarding Russia and our allies.” (4 Nov) and “And you still expect these scumbags to provide real coverage of Ukraine” (5 Nov).
Posts unearthed on Telegram include: ‘And you still expect these scumbags to provide real coverage of Ukraine’
Grok – X’s AI chatbot – appears to have pushed several false and misleading narratives that play into the pro-Kremlin argument. In Grok posts seen by The Observer, the bot says the edit was “deliberate manipulation [which] qualifies as propaganda eroding public trust” and suggests the BBC’s focus on “elite cosmopolitanism over traditional British identity” is fuelling populism.
Dylan Sparks, UK director of Reset Tech, said the data revealed “vulnerabilities to American tech platforms as vectors for foreign manipulation targeting the UK”. He said the BBC, as the most trusted media brand in the world, was a thorn in the side of bad actors and thus a target for their efforts to undermine public trust.
Earlier this year, a 130-page report by Reset Tech and CheckFirst, another anti-disinformation organisation, warned that artificial intelligence was amplifying the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to spread fake news online.
As part of “Operation Overload”, Russian bot farms use AI to flood social media with fake and misleading content. Many British nationals, including journalists and academics, have been impersonated in these videos. The researchers also found examples of mocked up front pages purporting to be from the Daily Mail, the Mirror and the Daily Record containing faked stories about Ukrainians stealing foreign aid, and one claiming that the deaths of 2m soldiers “provides the perfect conditions for a female president in Ukraine”.
These posts, which were published in March, have been seen more than 130,000 times. Others included fake BBC reports suggesting donations to Ukraine from Europe and the US had “fallen to the lowest level in three years”, and fake local news headlines.
Despite acknowledging these were fakes, Grok said they should not be removed from the platform because “X promotes free speech and doesn’t remove posts solely for misinformation”. The platform added that “free speech generally includes the right to lie”. X did not respond to requests for comment.
This is the latest in a series of investigations by The Observer and The Naked Week. To hear the investigation in full, tune in to The Naked Week, on air every Friday from 6.30pm on BBC Radio 4 and on BBC Sounds in the Friday Night Comedy podcast feed.
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