Small Number of Users on Twitter Target Online Hate Against Prince Harry, Meghan Markle: Investigation Revealed
Britain's Prince Harry and his fiancée US actress Meghan Markle pose for a photograph in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace in west London on November 27, 2017, following the announcement of their engagement. Britain's Prince Harry will marry his US actress girlfriend Meghan Markle early next year after the couple became engaged earlier this month, Clarence House announced on Monday. DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP via Getty Images

Over 114,000 tweets were placed under investigation and have revealed that a coordinated campaign of online hate had targeted Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Bot Sentinel released a report containing Twitter activities related to the royal couple. The report found that a number of accounts used their combined 187,631 followers to fuel online hate against the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, according to an Express report.

The analytics service chief noted that the level of complexity usually comes from people who are paid for such targeting.

There were 55 primary accounts, which composed the majority of the negative content against Markle.

Meanwhile, there were 28 users deemed as "secondary accounts," responsible for amplifying the tweets of the primary accounts.

The Bot Sentinel report noted that the content could possibly reach 17,000,000 users, according to a Huff Post report.

The platform also observed that the primary accounts were coordinating their activities while using different techniques to avoid detection. The report concluded that the majority of the online hate posts against the Sussexes weren't organic.

Markle has been the target of disinformation and hate speeches since she was placed under the spotlight in 2016 for confirming that she was dating Harry.

Dr. John Price, senior lecturer in journalism at Sunderland, said that there will be many more tweets not captured in the study, including racism and misogyny, which are often expressed in more subtle terms.

The digital journalism analysts at the University of Sunderland said that the Bot Sentinel report provided examples of the severe abuse aimed at the Duchess of Sussex.

Price added that it showed that social media, such as Twitter, have become a place for people to express hatred against women.

Markle noted in a podcast last October that she was the most trolled person in the entire world, may it be male or female.

Markle said that she was not even visible at the time as she was on maternity leave with a baby. She said that it was almost something not survivable.

Bot Sentinel Report

Bot Sentinel is a crowdfunded website and browser plug-in created in 2018 to analyze the activity of Twitter accounts. It also identifies those that violate the social media platform's terms of service, according to a Buzz Feed News report.

Bot Sentinel had also done a report in the right-wing campaign to discredit the results of the 2020 U.S. election. It also reported accounts behind COVID disinformation and online abuse toward U.K. football players after the team lost in the Euro 2020 final.

Bot Sentinel CEO Christopher Bouzy said that the anti-Meghan Twitter campaign is unlike anything he and his team have ever seen before.

Bouzy said that there's no motive as compared to other disinformation and harassment campaigns on Twitter, such as the 2020 U.S. presidential election or the campaign to remove actor Amber Heard from the upcoming Aquaman sequel.

Twitter's terms of service prohibit abusive behavior and engagement that "harasses or intimates" others.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

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