Alarming research on how local Facebook groups are being used to spread hate has been published which public sector communicators need to know about.
A small number of interlinked groups have become the engine room of far-right opinion that has sought to normalise racism, disinformation and conspiracy theories, findings show.
Results of the 12-month investigation have been peer-reviewed by academics and published in The Guardian.
As someone who has researched local Facebook groups for the past seven years this comes as no surprise. While some groups are cornerstones of their communities other groups spread hate.
Before I go through the research’s findings I need to address public sector communicators directly. If that’s you, I know the urge to click away is strong. You’re busy but I’d urge you to stay. This has the potential to undermine everything you are doing.
Why Facebook groups are important
The data is really clear here.
- Two thirds of the UK population in your area use Facebook.
- Two thirds of all Facebook users are members of Facebook groups. That’s about half the population.
- Facebook groups are the most important sources of local government information for everyone between the ages of 25 and 65.
- Facebook groups are more than three times as likely to be a source of local news than a Reach plc website for a 30-year-old.
- There is five times more local news than national news in Facebook groups.
- On average, there are more than four local Facebook group memberships per head of population in London rising to 12 per head in parts of Scotland.
For more reading, I’ve blogged on Ofcom research here, the importance of Facebook groups to Meta and the importance of news to Facebook groups
So, that’s setting out why Facebook groups are important. I’ll look at the research and then go through some strategies you can use.
If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?
The research findings: ‘Inside the everyday Facebook networks where far-right ideas grow’
In 2024, rioting took place across England in response to the murder of children in Southport and was fueled by far-right disinformation. Researchers traced a handful of those charged and then researched their publicly-available Facebook groups.
They found they were members of overlapping Facebook group networks with 600,000 members with many posts supporting those charged. An analysis using AI of 51,000 posts made in summer 2024 in those groups showed:
- A distrust of mainstream institutions.
- Scapegoating immigrants.
- ‘White British people are fed-up.’
- ‘I’m not far-right I’m just right.’
- Conspiracy theories.
Sander van der Linden, a professor of social psychology at Cambridge University, sums up:
“Regular people interacting with this content often don’t know that they’re part of some playbook or agenda. Political elites and opinion leaders such as Farage, [the far-right party] Homeland, or Tommy Robinson do take a page out of the fascist playbook and are using it to dupe regular people into engaging with their rhetoric. So they come up with a narrative such as ‘the mainstream media is lying to you’, or ‘scientific institutions are looking to censor people’.
“And then they try to get regular people to support, amplify and engage with those topics.”
If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?
This is a community cohesion thing not a politics thing
The copout way of this is to think this is that it is ‘political’ and that’s not something public sector comms people do. You are politically restricted, yes? This isn’t. This is community cohesion. This is protecting democracy against radicalisation.
This is not about the comms team getting involved in ‘he said she said’ arguments. But it is about using Facebook groups as a place to communicate. Some won’t be receptive but many others will be.
Having concerns is part of the political process and its for politicians to take up the issue. Making comments that lead to arrest and conviction is breaking the law. Plain and simple.
If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?
To engage online or to not
I’ve spoken to many public sector people who roll their eyes and despair at online behaviour. I feel for them. I’m proud to say I was part of the first wave of local government communicators who pioneered how social media was used. There were many of us. But those pre-COVId days feel far away.
There’s no doubt that since COVID the way people can speak to each other has fallen into the gutter and in some cases far worse.
But this poses a very serious question. Should the public sector engage online?
I’ve heard of people ducking out of posting on some key topics because they know there’ll be comments. I feel for them too but for me the main issue here is a lack of support for those who are monitoring pages and a lack of any strategic plan to deal with incoming comments.
If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?
Social media house rules
The ditch I’m prepared to die in are social media house rules. Every organisation that uses the internet needs one. It’s not a nice to have. It’s an essential to have. Indeed the Health and Safety Executive place a responsibility on employers to protect their staff from abuse in the workplace.
With a set of house rules you can firmly draw a line in the sand to block those who can’t talk online without shouting and swearing. Comms here is re-inventing the wheel that customer services has long been using. If you turn up to the council one stop shop and shout and swear there are consequences. So it should be online, too.
If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?
Engaging in awkward spaces in an emergency is sometimes a necessity
When a car drove into Liverpool supporters at the club’s city centre trophy parade the far right disinformation started within minutes. It was an immigrant, they said. It was an ‘illegal’.
Within hours, Merseyside Police had staged a press conference identifying the culprit as a British-born local man. News outlets such as BBC News, Sky News, the Liverpool Echo and other mainstream news outlets reported this development. As a result, the misinformation withered.
Had Merseyside Police not made the press conference and posted on X as well as other places the field would have been left for bad actors.
It is important to post in all spaces in an emergency.
If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?
Posting on your page with a plan is a necessity
First, posting to your own page.
I’ve heard of people who pull a punch rather than communicate on some issues. I can sympathise with that but for me it’s a team failing to do their job.
Instead, I’m impressed with the approach of organisations like Edinburgh Zoo, Sheffield City Council and Royal British Legion which stick to their guns and post on topics that will attract hate but have a plan to challenge it.
I’m pretty sure those organisations will remove the hateful content but they’ll also challenge snark pushing back. They’ll post a link to their house rules in the comments and push back at people criticising things like Black History Month or Pride. That’s so refreshing to see.
They’ll often do this by having a few bullet points up their sleeve around how to respond.
All of this is a time-honoured approach. In the early days of Twitter when we would post gritting updates, we’d have a link to the grit map as a stock response to someone asking if their street had been gritted when the trucks had gone out.
If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?
Sharing content into Facebook groups is a good idea
In training, when I’ve gone through the importance of Facebook groups, one observation from a comms team is that they are really busy. Do they really have to monitor every conversation?
The answer is of course ‘no.’
But going to where the eyeballs are has always been one of the laws of the internet. If there’s a Facebook group for a town where there’s a large fire it makes sense for the fire and rescue service to post an update there.
If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?
Getting help to share content into Facebook groups is an even better idea
Here’s where it gets interesting.
If capacity is a problem then getting help with sharing messages is a good idea.
In the past, I’ve worked with part of the NHS in a diverse area. Recruiting staff from across the Trust into a WhatsApp group to share messages in their own networks of Facebook group, Nextdoor or WhatsApp makes perfect sense.
A Romanian-speaker employed by the Trust can do a better job of sharing a message into Romanian networks than the comms team ever can.
In the public sector, it may be a mix of staff or community groups who are a waiting pool of people who are happy to share content.
If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?
The risk of not doing anything with Facebook groups is high
Facebook groups are an important part of the media landscape for communities.
The public sector has moral duty to engage with people whether that’s to educate, inform, sell tickets to shows, flag-up community events or drive behaviour change.
It also has a duty to use the most relevant tools to reach people where they are. It needs to be flexible and adaptable. If people are using Facebook groups then that’s where they need to be.
For me, this has moved from a nice to have to an essential to have. If the far right are using groups to radicalise then it’s a moral duty on all of us to push back.
If we ignore this, we may not like the society we may find ourselves living in.
If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?
The full research can be found here.
I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.
Creative commons credit: Grapes Hill Underpass by Evelyn Simak.
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