False information has circulated widely following devastating floods that killed at least 230 people near Valencia, Spain in October.
“We haven’t seen anything like this flood of disinformation and conspiracy theories in Spain,” said Ximena Villagrán, director of operations at the Spanish fact-checking organization, Maldita.
Maldita identified at least 112 topics of disinformation related to the floods. False claims spread that the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) technology was responsible for the floods. There was also an emergency phone number circulating that turned out to be a scam, and a rumor that hundreds of bodies were found and hidden by authorities in underground parking lots of shopping centers.
In the midst of the worst natural disaster in the history of Spain, the false information led to more confusion and anger among those affected, many of whom already felt abandoned. “Emergency situations are particularly vulnerable to disinformation,” said Matthew Baum, a professor at Harvard University who focuses on mis- and disinformation. “Reliable information is difficult to discern in the immediate aftermath, so it leaves the information playing field wide open for rumors of various types to emerge and quickly spread, without anyone available or accessible to counter them.”
Spanish influencers and public figures such as Georgina Rodriguez, the wife of the famous soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, also participated in amplifying the disinformation around the floods. She shared a video with her more than 64 million followers on Instagram, claiming that clothes donated to the victims were actually thrown in the trash. This turned out to be false. “Georgina is the most followed woman on Instagram in Spain. This video went everywhere in two hours,” said Villagrán.
Carlos Elías, a journalism professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid, echoed the concern. "What is dangerous is that people no longer see the difference between real journalists, who have a code of ethics, and other people, who are sometimes more followed than traditional media and who can relay all kinds of things," he said.
Motivations behind disinformation
A few days after the floods, a video showing a line of police cars with a voiceover saying it is the entourage of Spanish King Felipe VI, or in other instances that of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who were visiting Paiporta, one of the cities most affected, began to go viral online. "The King is escorted because otherwise he will be eaten alive," we can hear in the video, which fed a narrative that local authorities were more intent on escorting the King than helping the people.
In reality, however, the video shows police reinforcements — and not the King’s bodyguards — arriving to help victims of the flooding. That same day, during the King’s actual official visit in Paiporta, he was met with insults and mud-throwing.
Maldita identified that Russia was behind this disinformation campaign. "We started to analyze each channel and account where this video was published in different languages and finally went back to Russia. The initial distribution was made via Pravda channels and websites linked to Russian propaganda campaigns,” explained Villagrán. The European Digital Media Observatory considers Pravda, which operates websites in several languages, a Russian disinformation network.
According to Maldita, the objective was clear: to destabilize the country, exploiting victims’ anger toward authorities. "The idea behind it was to say: ‘look, your King and your democracy don't work.’ Democracy was really the target. [Russia wants] to destroy everything we trust, including this Western idea of democracy,” explained Villagrán. Fact-checking organizations in Eastern Europe have observed the same phenomenon, she added.
The reasons behind disinformation can also be political gain. “Some people seek to exploit natural disasters for political purposes. We saw that recently in the U.S. in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, when a variety of false stories were spread in North Carolina,” said Baum. “It was with pretty clear partisan political goals, especially given the proximity of the hurricane to the then-upcoming presidential election.”
A worrying future
A report by Maldita found that online platforms have not taken enough action during the huge wave of false information around the floods. Banners indicating that content is unverified, misleading, or generated by AI have been almost absent or difficult to apply in WhatsApp groups, and on Telegram, Facebook and Instagram.
Natural disasters lend themselves to misinformation and conspiracy theories, which bad actors have taken advantage of.
"On X, we realized that most of the viral content and disinformation were from accounts with the Twitter badge. It means that they are monetizing, so getting paid for publishing disinformation,” explained Villagrán.
With the election of Donald Trump in the U.S., and with Elon Musk part of his core team, experts are concerned that false information will become even more widespread, especially around climate-related events. “We’ve already seen an explosion of this sort of disinformation, and I do not expect it to abate in the near term,” said Baum. “If anything, it’s likely to worsen as climate skeptics gain power, providing them with a bigger megaphone, so to speak.”
As more people in Spain distrust news than trust it, experts are pushing for better media education. “This is the world we live in now,” said Elías. “We must learn from an early age to verify sources and not believe anyone on social networks who is perhaps more interested in advertising than in the truth.”
Taking into account the reach influencers have with audiences today, authorities should work with them in times of crisis, as they did during the pandemic. "Authorities should better consider them and share information with them, because they now generate a lot of trust from their audience. This could prevent this kind of thing,” he concluded.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.
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